Eight days afterwards, his majesty, "considering that circumstances forced him to abridge the fomrs which he had proposed to follow in the completion of the additional act," put forth another decree, by which he convoked the electoral colleges, as of old, that they might name representatives, and then repair together to Paristo proclaim the adoption of the act additional, &c. Thus, "the homage to civilization"—"the grand and beautiful spectacle" of Carnot, resolved itself into the arbitrary imposition of a supplement to the old imperial constitutions;-the Field of May, so far from being a field of scrutiny, revision, and discussion, as promised, dwindled into one of promulgation; and the "extraordinary assembly" into a convocation of heralds for an edict, framed without their concurrence. Had the fate of "the additional act" been made to depend upon the result of the polls, still the proceeding must have been illusory. No precaution was enjoined, by means of which it could be determined what signatures were real; or that the same individual had not signed in a hundred different places. France was in the crisis of a revolution, agitated by civil war in the south and west; under duress in all parts, from the excited spirit of the army, whose ready adhesion to the act could not be doubted. What scope, then, was there for a clear judgment or a free manifestation of opinion on the occasion? The whole number of affirmative votes which the government ventured to adduce as the sum of the registers, upon which the people and the army were called upon to inscribe a simple-yes, or no,-did not exceed one million, two hundred and sixty thousand. If from this amount we deduct the suffrages which came of course-those of the military-of the vast multitude of men in office of the federates,—those which we may presume to have been extorted by fear, or otherwise illegally obtained, the proportion of voters out of a population of thirty millions is reduced almost to utter insignificance. The number stated by the government, -not more than the one sixth of what the country could furnish upon the principle adopted of universal suffrage, would have been hardly sufficient to bear out the "additional act" had not its admission been providently made independent of the polls. Only 20,000 votes were counted for Paris, which should have given 150,000. The public labourers, journeymen of the manufactures, shoe-blacks, &c. marched in grand procession, with an array of banners to sign the constitution! With the higher character of knowledge and general respectability which our labouring classes possess, and from the uniform spirit and simplicity of our institutions, this proceeding would be natural and edifying in the United States; but in France it could only be disgusting and preposterous, since a very small proportion alone of this description of her population could even read, much less comprehend, the metaphysical constitution of sixty-seven articles submitted to their approbation. The electoral colleges convoked by the decree of the 30th April were to choose national representatives by virtue of the "additional act," even before the registers for the votes upon it could be closed. Twenty-nine of the departments sent no deputiess at all. In many of the departments where the number of the electors ought regularly to have been two and three hundred, it did not exceed thirty and twenty. vet of the finest red. The ministers and marshals of whom Massena, Ney, Lefebre, Kellerman, Moncey and Serrurier, were the most conspicuous, filled the neighbouring galleries; while the pages, chamberlains, officers in waiting, aides steps of the throne, opposite to which, in the middle of the Field of Mars, stood an altar, with an array of prelates. The benches left vacant from the dearth of deputies were occupied by the amateurs of raree-shows, a part of the nation never difficult to be found in Paris. The Field of May could not, under all circumstances, be got up until the 1st of June. It was then held, notwithstanding the paucity of votes, the enormous de-de-camp, &c. were grouped on the ficiency of deputies, and the " unaccountable absence of the dearly beloved spouse and her son." The armies were, however, abundantly represented. Fifteen deputies, consisting of five officers, and ten subalterns and soldiers, appeared from each regiment; fifteen thousand grenadiers of the old guard, and from thirty to forty thousand men altogether glittered in arms. It may be doubted whether liberty or a constitutional monarchy ever before sprung from amid such an array, or was introduced under such forms as those announced in the programme, or prospectus, of the grand-master of the ceremonies, Count de Ségur. No court of the East could at any time have furnished one of greater magnificence in sound, or more solemn minuteness of regulation. Never was there, to speak seriously, a more ridiculous and sacrilegious parody of a venerable institution of antiquity. Bonaparte, with a numerous and splendid military retinue,-the old imperial procession-repaired to the military school, and took his station upon a platform raised before that great edifice. The ex-kings Joseph and Jerome, and the Prince of Canino Lucien who had been for some time in Paris, inhabiting the palaces of the Luxembourg and the Palais-royal, appeared at his side; Jerome and Joseph on his right, and Lucien on his left, all three clad in a mantle of white velvet. Napoleon himself was attired in like manner, in vel The melo-drama commencedwith the celebration of high-mass by the Archbishop of Tours, assisted by Cardinal de Bayanne, and four bishops, all of whom had taken the oaths of fidelity to Louis XVIII. not a twelve-month before. At the conclusion of the religious rites so shockingly profaned both in respect of the character of the functionaries, and that of the juggle they were employed to auspicate, the "Orator of the Field of May" followed by five members of each electoral college, advanced to the foot of the throne, and declaimed an address voted to the emperor by the national assembly of the Field of May."-We need not be surprised, if, notwithstanding the facts above-mentioned as to the state of the votes and deputation, the orator declares, "that they were assembled from all points of the empire around the tables of the law, to inscribe thereon the will of the nation, of whose voice they were the immediate organs." In addition, the emperor is treated with a recapitulation of the many trite heads of abuse against "the league of the allied kings" and the intentions of the Bourbons; -with the usual enumeration of his incomparable excellencies and plans; with the assurance of the eternal, unanimous, unbounded support of a nation at once faithful, generous, energetic; inflexible in its principles, and invariable in its purposes. No discourse delivered at Roberspierre's festival of the Supreme Being or at the installation of the Goddess of reason, can be said to surpass the address of "the orator of the field of May," as a specimen of the rhapsodical, amphibological style. On one point it is particularly emphatic and positive; that victory would attend the imperial eagles in the impending struggle; or that the whole nation would perish with her hero (héros fondateur) if fall he must. The reply of his majesty, no doubt prepared by the same hand, harmonizes in all respects. It opens thus "Gentlemen, electors of the colleges; gentlemen, deputies of the army of land and sea, to the field of May. Emperor, consul, soldier, I owe all to the people. France has never ceased to be the constant and only object of my thoughts and actions." The reply proceeds with the assertions-that he had sacrificed himself for his people like the king of Athens | (Codrus), that his throne was only dear to him because it was the palladium of the rights of the people, that he had a right to count upon a long peace; but being disappointed, his first solicitude was to organize the nation properly, that the people had accepted his act additional, and that when the unjust aggressions of the foreigners were repelled a solemn law made in the forms prescribed by the act would reconcile and amalgamate the scattered con stitutions of the empire, &c. This last undertaking was, in fact, an adjournment sine die of the very "correction and modification of the constitutions," for which the Field of May was, ostensibly, meant. While "the additional act" confirming by its very title, the previous constitutions, remained at utter variance with themnothing was done. When his majesty finished, the archbishop of Bourges, acting as grand almoner-drew near to the throne, and, kneeling, presented the gospels to his majestywho swore upon them "to maintain and cause to be maintained the constitutions of the empire." The prince arch chancellor (Cambeceres) then came forward, and first of the subjects, took the oath of obedience to the constitutions and fidelity to the emperor. The assembly repeated, says the official narrative, with a unanimous voicewe swear it The ceremonies terminated with the arch chancellor's proclaiming, amid a flourish of drums and trumpets and the roar of artillery-that the constitution was accepted. Marshal Soult, as major-general of the armies, published immediately afterwards a glowing appeal to their love of Napoleon, in the shape of an order of the day." The most august ceremony has just consecrated our institutions. The emperor has received the expression of the wishes of the entire nation with regard to the additional act, and a new oath unites France and the emperor," &c. We doubt whether Bonaparte seriously expected to dupe the foreign powers, or even France, by a pageant of so burlesque a tissue and so lame a conclusion. It might serve, however, to divert the attention of his public from the general course of things; to satisfy the national appetite for splendid mummeries; and to entangle more deeply in his cause a greater number of the leading men of the interior thus brought forward to act, in the face of the world, as his immediate accomplices. This transaction is seen more clearly in its true light, when attention is paid to the measures of violence which were pursued as well after as before the promulgation of the new constitutional act. No dictatorship could be more absolute than the personal rule of Bonaparte up to the end of his career at Waterloo. It was exerted in a thousand decrees of the most arbitrary purport,-looking to the prostration of all mal-contents, and the production of military force, without reference to any constitutional forms whatever. By one decree seventeen individuals were proscribed and their property sequestered. The property of the royal family was confiscated, as well as that of the returned emigrants who were likewise again expelled the soil. The royal volunteers who had enlisted for the defence of the king, were put at the disposition of the minis. ter of war, to be enrolled under the banners of the emperor. The patriotic offerings of money, &c. made to the Bourbons, were extorted for his use. The whole national guard was called forth, and two hundred and four battalions put in requisition for the frontier departments. For the better execution of measures of this kind, eight lieutenant-generals of police were created, and dispersed throughout as many districts into which the empire was cast for them; all under the direction of the minister Vol. I. 65 of police at Paris.* Twenty-three extraordinary commissaries were sent-at the same time that the “act additional" was publishedinto the twenty-three military sections, with powers equal to those which the commissaries of the Convention had possessed.† We may conjecture how they were exercised from the declaration made in his place by one of the new peers of Bonaparte, that, in his dethe empire,-eighty individuals partment among the smallest of had been carried off from their houses without any form or process of law. The extraordinary commissaries dismissed obnoxious persons from the public offices, exiled or imprisoned them at discretion, made forced levies of men and money under various new denominations, suppressed at random writings or intelligence deemed unfavourable to their views, and brought home the military despotism to every door; while the lieutenants of police established a reign of concentrated terror under the name of a police of observation. All this was done by virtue of decrees of the emperor; and much more of the same kind in detail, by circulars, arrêtés and "The lieutenants of police," says Fouché in his letter of instructions to them, 66 are created in order to communicate with more certainty, the movement of the centre to the circumference; to collect into secondary reservoirs or foci, the facts observed upon all points of the circumference, and to transfer the results to a common or single centre." Most of the imperial commissaries had been, in fact, commissaries of the convention sent on a similar errand. issued by these bashaws imply an un- The tone and tenor of the arrêtés I proclamations issued daily, in the teeth of the fundamental provisions of the additional act. Whatever secret services Fouché the minister of police may have rendered the Bourbons during this period, so as to entitle him to the favour which he seemed to enjoy for some time after their return, it is certain that he was, ostensibly, indefatigable in the promotion of Bonaparte's views. His numerous circulars and reports constitute a complete digest of the calumnies and invectives heaped upon the royal government; of the fictitious merits and resources ascribed to the imperial; and of the revolutionary principles and recollections which Bonaparte wished to bring into action. Fouché bends all the weight which his station, by its supposed opportunities of knowledge, could give, against the royal cause, with a peculiar virulence of spirit and expression. He urges without reserve and with a colouring peculiar to his own livid fancy, every consideration of hope and fear, in support of the imperial government, that could be drawn from the magazine of falsehoods prepared for the crisis. He often refers to the eras of 92 and 93 and to the spirit which animated them, rather more fondly perhaps, than his master would have wished; the one going back to them with the inextinguishable affection of a worthy proconsul of the Convention; the other only suffering the allusion for a temporary purpose, while he dreaded its distant effects. The circular of Fouché to the lieutenants of police presents a code of political inquisition which we regret we cannot, on account of its length, transcribe entire. The directions relative to religion are too curious to be omitted." Religion (la chose réligieuse) should also engage your attention. Religion seems to lose ground every day; but the sectarian spirit gains by its losses. I wish to know what are the dispositions of the regular clergy; whether they are united or divided; whether they possess influence; to what extent, and upon whom and how it is exerted. It is not less important for me to know the new sects; the names and personal character of the sectaries, their political views, if they have any, their attachment or antipathy to such or such form of government, and to the person of the emperor. Examine all these things with care and report them to me with exactness." The most active and unsparing military preparations were begun from the moment of the arrival of Bonaparte at Paris, and continued without intermission. On the day following, he reviewed the troops assembled there, harangued them, and exacted an oath by acclamation "that those who might wish to invade France should never be able to bear the aspect of the imperial eagles"! The reader will have perceived that, in all the civic measures, in all the state-allocutions, the soldiery receive the first obeisance, and are even before the populace, as objects both of imperial and ministerial courtship. The first proclamations from Gulf St. Juan call the nation to arms; the first harangue to the troops at Paris promise them that they shall march, and hundreds of decrees and circulars for throwing the whole population into military array, soon evinced that the armies were not to be disappointed of their natural hope and reward. Besides the military measures of which we have already spoken, the national guard was attempted to be revived to the number of |