Here Louis Napoleon goes into difficulties experienced between citizens who care about rights and the partisans of money power. The key in standing up for one’s rights is knowledge and organization. This book continually details how Napoleon achieved marvels on behalf of the interests of justice.
To render the senators independent, and to attach them to the soil of the provinces, there were established in each arrondissement of the court of appeals a senatorial estate returning to the incumbent senator 20,000 to 25,000 francs income for life. The members of the legislative body were nominated by the electoral colleges of the departments, and were paid during the sessions. It is important to call to mind here the mode of election introduced by Napoleon. In the Constitution of the year 8, Sieyes had invented a system of representation by Notables, which deprived
the people of all participation in the eleotions. Although Sieyes, a former member of the Constituent Assembly, of the Convention, and of the Directory, was a friend of liberty, he found himself compelled to do this, by circumstances, and in order to preserve the Republic; for, before the 18th Fructidor, the elections returned royalists to the legislative body; the 18th Fructidor drove them out. Then came the turn of the Jacobins; the 28th Floréal eliminated them; but in the following elections they appeared to maintain themselves, and took measures to dismiss their rivals. There was nothing permanent; it was, each year, as Thibaudeau himself says, the triumph of a party. But the firm and national march of the Consulate had already created a strong and compact France; and the vessel of state was in less danger of being wrecked upon one of the two rocks which were always to be feared-terror and the ancien régime. Napoleon, created Consul for life, suppressed the lists of Notabilities of Sieyes, and established district assemblies, composed of all the citizens residing in the district. These assemblies chose the members of the electoral colleges of the arrondissements and of the departments. Those who paid the largest amount of taxes imposed in the department were eligible to the electoral colleges; but there could be added to the colleges of the ar-
arrondissements ten members, and to the colleges of the departments, twenty members not proprietors, selected from among the members of the Legion of Honor, or from among those who had distinguished themselves by services. The colleges nominated two candidates for vacant places in the legislative body; the college of the department alone nominated candidates for the places of senators; one of the two candidates must be taken from elsewhere than the college making the nomination. Examining the spirit which dictated these laws, framed at an epoch when the people were emerging from violent discussions, when war was always threatening, and when the most sincere friend of liberty saw the necessity of limiting the rights of election, it is impossible not to recognize that it was the intention of the Emperor to re-establish the elective system upon the broadest basis, and the following words of the orator of government at that time, confirm this opinion: "The electoral colleges bind the high authorities and the people reciprocally to each other; they are intermediate bodies between power and the people; they imply a classification of citizens, an organisation of the nation. In that classification "it was necessary to combine the contrary interests of capitalists and prolétaires, because property is the fundamental basis of all political asso-
association. It was necessary also to introduce non-proprietors, in order to keep open a career to talent and to genius." The Council of State was one of the most important wheels of the machinery of the Empire. Composed of the most distinguished men, it formed the privy council of the sovereign. Its members, free from all constraint, not intent upon producing an effect, and stimulated by the presence of the sovereign, wrought out the laws without any other preoccupation than the interests of France. The orators of the Council of State were required to present for the acceptance of the chambers the laws which it had prepared. The Emperor created auditors of the Council of State; their number was carried up to three hundred and fifty; they were divided into three classes, and attached to all branches of administration. The Council of State formed thus a nursery of instructed and enlightened men, capable of carrying on advantageously the administration of the country. Familiar with all great political questions, they received from the government important missions. This institution supplied a great want; for, when a country has schools of jurisprudence, of medicine, of war, of theology, etc., is it not contrary to reason that it should not have one for the art of governing, which is the most difficult of all
arts, for it embraces all the sciences, exact, political, and moral? (1)
“I prepared for my son," said the Emperor at Saint Helena, " a most advantageous position. I educated for him a new school, the numerous class of auditors of the Council of State. Their education finished, and having come of age, they would, some day, have filled all the important posts of the Empire; strong in our principlea, and in the examples of our predecessors, they would have been, all of them, from twelve to fifteen years older than my son; which would have placed him precisely between two generations most advantageously-maturity, experience, and wisdom above, youth and activity below."
* In default of an efficient tribune, which the constitutionai government would have given to France, never had a sovereign so enlightened a council, or one in which all questions concerning administrative and civil order were discussed with more freedom and independence. In the absence of that tribune which would have expressed public opinion, never did a Sovereign better divine the true state of opinion, never did any other analyze better its character or know better how to profit often by its correctness, sometimes also by its errors. (Thibaudeau.)
No matter how hard he tried, Napoleon could not save his son from his enemies.
I have felt my entire life that I have been held back by a privileged group which keeps real opportunities for themselves only.
This project shows day by day how they try holding me back in their sneaky way.
Napoleon was against such rigged systems.
They seemed to open the gate of success to me if I would’ve walked into the trap of the fake populist Q movement.
This project is a great place to witness sneaky attacks happening live.
Then one can easily recognize those attacks elsewhere.