Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III

It follows, also, from the paucity of laws afforded by a code constructed not by the growth of time, but suggested by the ingenuity of theorists suddenly called to the task, and considering its immense importance, executing it in haste, that many provisions, most important for the exercise of justice, must, of course, be neglected in the French Code. For example, the whole law of evidence, the very key and corner-stone of justice between man and man, has been strangely overlooked in the French jurisprudence. It is plain, that litigation may proceed for ever, unless there be some previous adjustment (called technically an issue) betwixt the parties, at the sight of the judge, tending to ascertain their averments in point of fact, as also the relevancy of those averments to the determination of the cause. In England, chiefly during the course of last century, the Law of Evidence has grown up to a degree of perfection, which has tended, perhaps more than any other cause, at once to prevent and to shorten litigation. If we pass from the civil to the penal mode of procedure in France, the British lawyer is yet more shocked by a course, which seems in his view totally to invert and confound every idea which he has received upon the law of evidence. Our law, it is well known, is in nothing so scrupulous as in any conduct towards the prisoner, which may have the most indirect tendency to entrap him into bearing evidence against himself. Law sympathizes in such a case with the frailties of humanity, and, aware of the consequence which judicial inquiries must always have on the mind of the timid and ignorant, never pushes the examination of a suspected person farther than he himself, in the natural hope of giving such an account of himself as may procure his liberty, shall choose to reply to it.

In France, on the contrary, the whole trial sometimes resolves into a continued examination and cross-examination of the prisoner, who is not only under the necessity of giving his original statement of the circumstances on which he founds his defence, but is confronted repeatedly with the witnesses, and repeatedly required to reconcile his own statement of the case with that which these have averred. With respect to the character of evidence, the same looseness of practice exists. No distinction seems to be made between that which is hearsay and that which is direct – that which is spontaneously given, and that which is extracted, or perhaps suggested, by leading questions. All this is contrary to what we are taught to consider as the essence of justice towards the accused. The use of the rack is, indeed, no longer admitted to extort the confession, but the mode of judicial examination seems to us a species of moral torture, under which a timid and ignorant, though innocent man, is very likely to be involved in such contradictions and inextricable confusion, that he may be under the necessity of throwing away his life by not knowing how to frame his defence.

We shall not protract these remarks on the Code Napoleon; the rather that we must frankly confess, that the manners and customs of a country make the greatest difference with respect to its laws, and that a system may work well in France, and answer all the purposes of jurisprudence, which in England would be thought very inadequate to the purpose. The humane institution which allows the accused the benefit of counsel, is a privilege which the English law does not permit to the accused, and may have its own weight in counterbalancing some of the inconveniences to which he is subjected in France. It seems also probable, that the deficiencies in the Code, arising from its recent origin and compressed form, must be gradually remedied, as in England, by the course of decisions pronounced by intelligent and learned judges; and that what we now state as an objection to the system, will gradually disappear under the influence of time.

Considered as a production of human science, and a manual of legislative sagacity, the Code may challenge general admiration for the clear and wise manner in which the axioms are drawn up and expressed. There are but few peculiarities making a difference betwixt its principles and those of the Roman law, which has in most contracts claimed to be considered as the mother of judicial regulation. The most remarkable occurs, perhaps, in the articles regulating what is called the Family Council – a subject which does not seem of importance sufficient to claim much attention.

The Civil Code being thus ascertained, provision was made for its regular administration by suitable courts; the judges of which did not, as before the Revolution, depend for their emoluments upon fees payable by the litigants, but were compensated by suitable salaries at the expense of the public. As France does not supply that class of persons who form what is called in England the unpaid magistracy, the French justices of peace received a small salary of from 800 to 1800 francs. Above them in rank came judges in the first instance, whose salaries amounted to 3000 francs at the utmost. The judges of the supreme tribunals enjoyed about four or five thousand francs; and those of the High Court of Cassation had not more than ten thousand francs, which scarcely enabled them to live and keep some rank in the metropolis. But, though thus underpaid, the situation of the French judges was honourable in the eyes of the country, and they maintained its character by activity and impartiality in their judicial functions.

The system of juries had been introduced in criminal cases, by the acclamation of the Assembly. Buonaparte found them, however, scrupulously restive and troublesome. There may be some truth in the charge, that they were averse from conviction, where a loop-hole remained for acquitting the criminal; and that many audacious crimes remained unpunished, from the punctilious view which the juries took of their duty. But it was from other motives than those of the public weal that Napoleon made an early use of his power, for the purpose of forming special tribunals, invested with a half-military character, to try all such crimes as assumed a political complexion, with power to condemn without the suffrage of a jury.318 We have already alluded to this infringement of the most valuable political rights of the subject, in giving some account of the trials of Georges, Pichegru, and Moreau. No jury would ever have brought in a verdict against the latter, whose sole crime was his communication with Pichegru; a point of suspicion certainly, but no proof whatever of positive guilt. Political causes being out of the field, the trial by jury was retained in the French Code, so far as regarded criminal questions; and the general administration of justice seems to have been very well calculated for protecting the right, and punishing that which is wrong.

TAXATION – FOREIGN TRADE.

The fiscal operations of Buonaparte were those of which the subjects complained the most, as indeed these are generally the grievances to which the people in every country are the most sensible. High taxes were imposed on the French people, rendered necessary by the expenses of the government, which, with all its accompaniments, were very considerable; and although Buonaparte did all in his power to throw the charge of the eternal wars which he waged upon the countries he overran or subdued, yet so far does the waste of war exceed any emolument which the armed hand can wrest from the sufferers, so imperfect a proportion do the gains of the victor bear to the losses of the vanquished, that after all the revenue which was derived from foreign countries, the continual campaigns of the Emperor proved a constant and severe drain upon the produce of French industry. So rich, however, is the soil of France, such are the extent of her resources, such the patience and activity of her inhabitants, that she is qualified, if not to produce at once the large capitals which England can raise upon her national credit, yet to support the payment of a train of heavy annual imposts for a much longer period, and with less practical inconvenience. The agriculture of France had been extremely improved since the breaking up of the great estates into smaller portions, and the abrogation of those feudal burdens which had pressed upon the cultivators; and it might be considered as flourishing, in spite of war taxes, and, what was worse, the conscription itself.319 Under a fixed and secure, though a severe and despotic government, property was protected, and agriculture received the best encouragement, namely, the certainty conferred on the cultivator of reaping the crop which he sowed.

It was far otherwise with commerce, which the maritime war, carried on so long and with such unmitigated severity, had very much injured, and the utter destruction of which was in a manner perfected by Buonaparte's adherence to the continental system. This, indeed, was the instrument by which, in the long run, he hoped to ruin the commerce of his rival, but the whole weight of which fell in the first instance on that of France, whose seaports showed no other shipping save coasters and fishing vessels; while the trade of Marseilles, Bourdeaux, Nantes, and other great commercial towns, had, in a great measure, ceased to exist. The government of the Emperor was proportionally unpopular in those cities; and although men kept silence, because surrounded by the spies of a jealous and watchful despotism, their dislike to the existing state of things could not entirely be concealed.320

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.

Even if some of Buonaparte's most magnificent works of public splendour had been completed, there is room to doubt whether they would have been attended with real advantage to his power, bearing the least proportion to the influence which their grandeur necessarily produces upon the imagination. We look with admiration, and indeed with astonishment, on the splendid dock-yards of the Scheldt; but, had they been accomplished, what availed the building of first-rates, which France could hardly find sailors to man; which being manned, dared not venture out of the river; or, hazarding themselves upon the ocean, were sure to become the prizes of the first British men-of-war with whom they chanced to encounter? Almost all this profuse expense went to the mere purposes of vain glory; for more mischief would have been done to British commerce, which Buonaparte knew well was the assailable point, by six privateers from Dunkirk, than by all the ships of the line which he could build at the new and most expensive dock-yard of Antwerp, with Brest and Toulon to boot.

In such cases as these, Napoleon did, in a most efficient manner, that which he ridiculed the Directory for being unable to do – he wrought on the imagination of the French nation, which indeed had been already so dazzled by the extraordinary things he had accomplished, that, had he promised them still greater prodigies than were implied in the magnificent works which he directed to be founded, they might still have been justified in expecting the performance of his predictions. And it must be admitted, looking around the city of Paris, and travelling through the provinces of France, that Buonaparte has, in the works of peaceful grandeur, left a stamp of magnificence, not unworthy of the soaring and at the same time profound spirit, which accomplished so many wonders in warfare.

PERSONAL AND FAMILY LIFE.

The personal and family life of Napoleon was skilfully adapted to his pre-eminent station. If he had foibles connected with pleasure and passion, they were so carefully veiled to remain unknown to the world – at least, they were not manifested by any of those weaknesses which might serve to lower the Emperor to the stamp of common men. His conduct towards the Empress Josephine was regular and exemplary. From their accession to grandeur till the fatal divorce, as Napoleon once termed it, they shared the privacy of the same apartment, and for many years partook the same bed. Josephine is said, indeed, to have given her husband, upon whom she had many claims, some annoyance by her jealousy, to which he patiently submitted, and escaped the reproach thrown on so many heroes and men of genius, that, proof to every thing else, they are not so against the allurements of female seduction. What amours he had were of a passing character. No woman, excepting Josephine and her successor, who exercised their lawful and rightful influence, was ever known to possess any power over him.325