acquire adherents, by addressing himself rather to men's interests than to their principles; and many of his friends so gained, naturally became examples of the politic observation, "that if a prince places men in wealthy circumstances, the first thing they think of, in danger, is how to preserve the advantages they have obtained, without regard to his fate to whom they owe them."
We do not believe that it occurred to any person while these events were passing, to question either the formality or the justice of the doom of forfeiture against Napoleon; but Time has called out many authors, who, gained by the brilliancy of Napoleon's reputation, and some of them bound to him by ties of gratitude or friendship, have impugned, more or less directly, the formality of the Senate's procedure, as well as the justice of their sentence. We, therefore, feel it our duty to bestow some consideration upon this remarkable event in both points of view.
The objection proposed against the legality of the Senate's acting as the organ of the people, in pronouncing the doom of forfeiture, rests upon the idea, that the right of dethroning the sovereign, who shall be guilty of oppression beyond endurance, can only be exercised in a peculiar and formal manner, or, as our law-phrase goes, "according to the statute made and provided in that case." This seems to take a narrow view of the subject. The right of redressing themselves under such circumstances, does not belong to, and is not limited by, any peculiar forms of civil government. It is a right which belongs to human nature under all systems whatever. It exists in every government under the sun, from that of the Dey of Algiers to the most free republic that ever was constructed. There is, indeed, much greater latitude for the exercise of arbitrary authority in some governments than in others. An Emperor of Morocco may, with impunity, bathe his hands to the elbows in the blood of his subjects shed by his own hand; but even in this the most absolute of despotisms, there are peculiar limits which cannot be passed by the sovereign without the exercise of the natural right of resistance on the part of his subjects, although their system of government be as arbitrary as words can declare it to be, and the Emperor is frequently dethroned and slain by his own guards.
In limited governments, on the other hand, like that of Great Britain, the law imposes bounds, beyond which the royal authority shall not pass; but it makes no provision for what shall take place, should a monarch, as in the case of James II., transgress the social compact. The constitution averts its eyes from contemplating such an event – indeed it is pronounced impossible; and when the emergency did arrive, and its extrication became a matter of indispensable necessity, it was met and dealt with as a concurrence of circumstances which had not happened before, and ought never to be regarded as being possible to occur again. The foreigner who peruses our constitution for the forms of procedure competent in such an event as the Revolution, might as well look in a turnpike act for directions how to proceed in a case resembling that of Phaeton.
If the mode of shaking off an oppressive yoke, by declaring the monarchy abdicated or forfeited, be not a fixed form in a regular government, but left to be provided for by a convention or otherwise, as a case so calamitous and so anomalous should demand, far less was it to be supposed that a constitution like that of France, which Buonaparte had studiously deprived of every power and means of checking the executive, should contain a regular form of process for declaring the crown forfeited. He had been as careful as despot could, to leave no bar in existence before which the public might arraign him; but will it be contended, that the public had therefore forfeited its natural right of accusing and of obtaining redress? If he had rendered the Senate the tame drudges which we have described, and prorogued the Legislative Body by an arbitrary coup d'état, was he therefore to escape the penalty of his misgovernment? On the contrary, the nation of France, like Great Britain at the time of the Revolution 1688, was to proceed as it best could in taking care, Ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat. The Senate was not, perhaps, the best organ for expressing public opinion, but it was the only one Napoleon had left within reach, and therefore it was seized upon and made use of. That it was composed of men who had so long gone on with Napoleon's interest, and now were able to keep up in course with him no longer, made his misrule even yet more glaring, and the necessity of the case more evident.
It is of far more importance to be enabled to form an accurate judgment respecting the justice of the sentence of forfeiture pronounced against this eminent man, than upon its mere formality. That we may examine this question with the impartiality it deserves, we must look upon it not only divested of our feelings as Britons, but as unconnected with the partisans either of the Bourbons or of Buonaparte. With these last there could be no room either for inquiry or conviction. The Royalist must have been convinced that Napoleon deserved, not deprivation only, but death also, for usurping the throne of his rightful sovereign; and the Buonapartist, on the other hand, would hold it cowardly treason to desert the valiant Emperor, who had raised France to such a state of splendour by his victories, more especially to forsake him in the instant when Fortune was looking black upon his cause. There could be no argument between these men, save with their good swords in a fair field.
But such decided sentiments were not entertained upon the part of the great bulk of the French nation. A large number of the middle classes, in particular, remembering the first terrors of the Revolution, had showed their willingness to submit to the yoke which gradually assumed a despotic character, rather than, by a renewed struggle for their liberties, to run the risk of reviving the days of Terror and Proscription. It is in the person of such an individual, desirous of the honour and advantage of his country, and anxious at the same time for the protection of his own family and property, that we now endeavour to consider the question of Napoleon's forfeiture.
The mind of such a person would naturally revert to the period when Buonaparte, just returned from Egypt, appeared on the stage like a deity descending to unloose a perplexing knot, which no human ingenuity could extricate. Our citizen would probably admit, that Napoleon used the sword a little too freely in severing the intricacies of the noose; or, in plain words, that the cashiering the Council of Five Hundred, at the head of his grenadiers, was an awkward mode of ascending to power in a country which still called itself free. This feeling, however, would be greatly overbalanced by recollecting the use which was made of the power thus acquired; the subjugation, to wit, of foreign enemies, the extinction of civil dissensions, the protection of property, and, for a time, of personal liberty also. Napoleon's having elevated France from the condition of a divided and depressed country, in the immediate apprehension of invasion, into that of arbitress of Europe, would at once justify committing the chief authority to such able hands, and excuse the means he had used for attaining it; especially in times when the violent and successive changes under which they had long suffered, had made the nation insensible to irregularities like those attached to the revolution of the 18th Brumaire. Neither would our citizens probably be much shocked at Napoleon's assuming the crown. Monarchy was the ancient government of France, and successive changes had served to show that they could not fix on any other form of constitution, labour how they would, which was endowed with the same degree of permanence. The Bourbons had, indeed, the claim by birth to mount that throne, were it to be again erected. But they were in exile, separated by civil war, party prejudices, the risk of reaction, and a thousand other difficulties, which seemed at the time absolutely insurmountable. Buonaparte was standing under the canopy, he grasped the regal sceptre in his hand, his assuming the royal seat passed almost as a matter of course.
Our supposed Parisian has next to review a course of years of such brilliancy as to baffle criticism, and charm reason to silence, till the undertakings of the Emperor seem to rise above each other in wonder, each being a step towards the completion of that stupendous pyramid, of which the gradations were to be formed by conquered provinces, until the refractory and contumacious isle of Britain should be added to complete the pile, on the top of which was destined to stand the armed form of Napoleon, trampling the world under his foot. This is the noble work which France and her monarch were in the act of achieving. It requires the sacrifice of children or relatives to fill their ranks; they go where Honour calls, and Victory awaits them. These times, however, are overclouded; there come tidings that the stone heaved by such portentous exertion so high up the hill, has at length recoiled on him who laboured to give it a course contrary to nature. It is then that the real quality of the fetters, hitherto gilded over by success, begins
