of the State through a miry pass, and when the days of his power were over, he was responsible for his stewardship.

The admirers of Napoleon, those that served him, and those who now worship his name, have ever striven to present him in this light. They felt instinctively that this was the only way of reconciling his acts with the great aim of our times. We are well aware that there are two other classes of Napoleonists. There

are those who boldly assert that Napoleon actually ruled France in a liberal spirit, and that freedom really was enjoyed under him; and there are those who, with still greater boldness, maintain that France did not struggle for liberty in her first revolution, nor that she yearns for it now; that all she ever wanted is equality. This opinion was proclaimed at the time when the present emperor of the French was forging a .new crown for himself, and new gyves for bleeding France. We have nothing to do with this species of Napoleonists. They are void of the shame of history, or else, not knowing it and its sacred character, they merely write to say something new and startling. leave them and pass on."

"We

The elder brother of Napoleon was not of their opinion. In many of his letters, written from his exile in the United States, he expresses the idea that Napoleon was a dictator-a real lover of liberty, forced by foreign enemies to assume the sole power of the State; a power developed by the wars into which he was driven, to such an extent, that in a measure it overpowered himself. Joseph Bonaparte has repeatedly expressed this idea, especially in an elaborate letter to Count Thibeaudeau, who had stated in his history, that Napoleon had caused France to retrograde in the path of liberty. But we must confess, that the idea of a dictatorship in Napoleon seems not to have been very clear in the mind of that able, benevolent, and otherwise clear-headed and liberal brother of the emperor; for, in the same letter to Count Thibeaudeau, he shows that the dire idea of the "Cæsars," successfully revived with its blighting associations, in our own times, was also floating in

the mind of Joseph. He says: "He (the emperor) has succumbed in the struggle. It is impossible to say what he would have done after Actium. I say what I know. Impartial men, who have seen nothing but the internal facts, will say that probably Napoleon would have been as superior to Augustus, as he had been to Octavius; that a man of such a genius, would not have desired anything but what was meet for the French people; and that, if he were living now,t he would make France as happy by her institutions, as the fortunate country which I inhabit-a country which proves that liberal institutions make nations happy and wise." Yet this very Napoleon used to repeat: Everything for the people, nothing by the people.

That same letter to Count Thibeaudeau contains the remarkable sentence: "Napoleon isolated himself much in France; people ended with no longer understanding what he was after."

The studious reader will find this letter on page 320, of the tenth volume of the Memoirs and Correspondence, political as well as military, of King Josephthe last volume of which has just appeared in Paris.

Joseph expresses similar views in a letter to Francis Lieber, which follows in the mentioned volume, immediately after that to Count Thibeaudeau. Indeed, he endorsed a copy of the latter in that to the former.

We consider these two letters of great interest, if they are not important in point of historical facts. We shall give the translation of the one to Mr. Lieber, in this paper, feeling assured that its perusal will prove the propriety of inserting it.

When Lieber had resolved to write the Encyclopædia Americana, he wished to turn the presence of Napoleon's brother in this country to good account, with reference to some disputed facts in the great period which had just ended, and regarding which Joseph Bonaparte had it in his power to give him light. He wrote, therefore, at once to Count Survilliers, asking him whether he would allow him occasionally to apply

†The letter is dated, Point-Breeze, 19th May, 1829.

to him for information concerning important facts in his own, or his brother's life. The answer was friendly and liberal, and produced a correspondence, of which a number of letters are now in the hands of Lieber. Possibly they may be published. It seems that Joseph retained copies of all his letters; at any rate, a copy of the letter which has been mentioned must have been among the papers of the man, who, twice king, lived among us an esteemed and beloved citizen, full of unpretending and genuine kindness.*

The emperor himself was desirous of having his reign considered as a dictatorship. This was at least the case in his exile, where, as it is well-known, and was natural, he occupied himself much with his name and reputation as they would appear to posterity. On one occasion he observed: Some people have said that I ought to have made myself a French Washington. All that I was allowed to be was a crowned Washington. For me to imitate Washington would have been a niaiserie."

Не

meant, undoubtedly, that circumstances did not allow him to be a Washington. This is true; but it is equally true that he could never have been a Washington, whatever the circumstances might have been.

There are no two men in the whole breadth of history more unlike to one another. Washington's fellow star of the binary constellation is William of Nassau, the founder of the Netherlands republic, not Bonaparte, crowned or uncrowned.

Napoleon's and Washington's minds and souls differed no less than their bodies. The one was wholly Anglican, or Teutonic; the other a very type of the Celtic or Iberian. The one great and noble as a calm and persevering man of duty; the other impetuous, and of flashy brilliancy. Washington has ever appeared to us as the historic model of sound common sense, and sterling judgment, coupled with immaculate patriotism. There was nothing brilliant in Washington, unless, indeed, the Fabian

genius of unyielding perseverance in a high career, be called brilliant. Napoleon, on the other hand is, possibly, the most brilliant character of all modern times. Glory was his very idol. Washington was throughout his life a selflimiting man; Napoleon was ever a selfstimulating man. The fever of grandeur consumed him. Washington was obedient to the law, a law-abiding man if ever there was one; Napoleon constantly broke down the law when it appeared necessary to him, and it appeared to him often so. Washington aided in creating a new empire; Napoleon created, or aimed at creating a new state of things. Washington arose out of a struggle of independencc-a severance of colonies from a distant mother-country; Napoleon arose out of a fearful internal revolution. Washington is daily growing in the affection of history, and there is the most remarkable uniformity of opinion regarding his character; there is the greatest difference of opinion regarding Napoleon's, and however many may admire him, no one loves him, except some survivors, who have received acts of personal kindness at his hands. No man ever loves power merely as power. We could not even love God were He only almighty. Washington never persecuted; he imprisoned no opponent, banished no enemy, and when he died his hands were unstained like Pericles'; Napoleon banished, imprisoned, and persecuted, and developed a system of police, which must be called stupendous, on account of its vastness, completeness, perfection, power, and penetrating refinement a system pressing to this day on France like an Alp, and which makes all that Aristotle writes on the police of usurpers appear as the veriest trash. The Dionysian sycophant was a poor bungler, compared to an agent of the French secret police; and, be it well remembered, this gigantic police system with the gendarmerie, and all the thousand ramifications, is essentially Napoleonic. It was developed in all its stifling grandeur under him, and is, unfor

tunately, more truly his own, than the code which bears his name.

Washington was strictly institutional in his character, and never dreamed of concentration of power. If Satan ever appeared to him showing him the glory and power of a kingdom on earth, it was buried in his noble breast, and no act or word of his has ever shown even a struggle to beat down the tempter. Napoleon had no instinct for institutional government whatever,* and constantly struck out new paths of brilliancy to make him and his people more glorious. Washington was a citizen, and statesman, a patriot and also a soldier; Napoleon was soldier above all. He acknowledges it, and is proud of it. To be the greatest captain was his greatest glory.

We Americans acknowledge that Washington plainly served his country, to which he bowed as the great thing above him and above all; the greatest admirers of Napoleon say that "soldiers, money, peoples, were in his hands but means to establish un système grandiose. Washington never was a dictator, and never aimed at a dictatorship; Napoleon claims the title to explain or excuse his despotism and centralism. Washington never compared himself to any one; Napoleon compares himself to him. Washington's policy was strictly domestic, and in leaving public life he urges the abstaining from foreign policy as a most essential point in the whole American State-system. Napoleon's policy became from year to year more foreign, until it ended almost exclusively in conquest, and an absolute supremacy of France, to which all else was sacrificed. Washington was a modest man; Napoleon looked upon himself as a sort of Fate. Washington was one of the beginners of the Revolution; Napoleon steps in when the revolution of his country had already developed immense pow

ers and forces. Washington aimed at no elevation of his family, and dies a justice of the peace; Napoleon writes to Joseph: I want a family of kings (il me faut une famille de rois.) Washington divests himself of the chief magistracy, voluntarily and gracefully, leaving to his people a document which after-ages honor like a political gospel; Napoleon, in his last days, is occupied with the idea of family aggrandizement, or with the means by which his house may be prevented from mingling again with common men. During his closing illness he directs General Bertrand to advise, in his name, the members of his family to settle chiefly in Rome, where their children ought to be married to the princely families of the Colonnas, &c., and where some Bonaparte would not fail to become pope. Jerome and Caroline ought to reside in Switzerland, where, in Berne, they must establish themselves in the Swiss "Oligarchy," and where a landamman-shipt would be certain to fall to the family; and the children of Joseph, should he remain in America, might marry into the great families of the Washingtons and Jeffersons, and a Bonaparte would become President of the United States.§ Washington was all that this country at the time required, and no more; he was thus, and remains, a political blessing to our country. Was Napoleon all that France required, and no more? Did the desires of his genius and his personal greatness not present themselves as France to his enormous mind? Even Louis Napoleon has said on his throne that his uncle, it must be owned, had loved war too much.

Both Washington and Napoleon have been men of high action, and some points of similarity undoubtedly exist, but to find them is a work of ingenuity, rather than one that naturally presents itself to an ingenuous mind.

His

If Napoleon really was a dictator, forced by France, or by foreign combinations to assume that character-if the establishment of liberty was a merely suspended work with him, we would find the element of freedom in his character and psychological configuration, at some time or other in his life. But the more closely we examine the character of that gigantic man, the more we become convinced that, as we expressed it before, he was eminently destitute of a civic character. There was no ingredient of freedom in the brass of that colossus. He was bred a soldier; his youth was imbued with Rousseauism, as it has been called; his early manhood, when his ideas became, to use one of his own favorite expressions, bien arrêté, and "his soul ripened," fell in a period at which popular absolutism was revelling in anarchy; all his instincts were towards the grand, the effective in history, without any reference to the solemn meaning of the individual, without which, real liberty cannot be imagined. We find, secondly, that in no case did he lay the foundation of institutions in which liberty may be said to have lain undeveloped, as the whole organism of the future independent individual is foreshadowed in the foetus, dependent though it be, for the time, upon the mother. We find that wherever he changed laws or institutions, established by the revolution, he curtailed, or extinguished liberty in them, substituting everywhere an uncompromising centralism. When Napoleon was liberal, we believe it will be generally found that it amounts rather to this-that he was not small, not mean. He was too great a man to be puny in any sphere; but we do not know that he ever acknowledged freedom of action as a substantive thing, and independent of himself. Lastly, if Napoleon really aimed at ultimate liberty, we must necessarily find some indication that his measures were purely provisional, in his abundant correspondence with his brother Joseph, as given in the work repeatedly cited.

We certainly do not agree with the dictum, that a man necessarily shows his character in the truest light in his letters. Many a genial man writes arid letters; many a morose husband writes affectionately to his wife; many a liberal man writes as if he were penurious; but the many letters of Napoleon to his brother are written for the very purpose of imparting his system to the brother he had

just made a king, of communicating his ideas of statesmanship to him, and of informing him of the great ends of what we will call Napoleonism. We think that these letters are invaluable as to a clearer understanding of Napoleon. The French editors justly consider them so; only, they and we differ regarding the opinions and ends of Napoleon, disclosed in this precious correspondence—a collection, the like of which is not to be found in all history. No emperor like him ever wrote letters under such circumstances to a cherished, though frequently abused brother of his. The historian cannot be sufficiently thankful that they have been preserved.

What, then, was it that floated as the great ideal over the depth of his soul? What was the fundamental idea of which "the honor of my crown,' ""the glory of France," ," "the grand nation," "the grand empire," " the grande armée," and all similar terms and things were but emanations? What was the "grand système que la divine Providence nous a destiné à fonder," as he calls it in the decree of the thirtieth of March, 1806, by which he recognizes his brother Joseph as King of Naples?

Throughout his proclamations, laws, letters, and whole administration, we find a clear and determined hostility to the ancient system of feudal privileges, and of administrative corruption and mismanagement. We find a pretty clear idea of equality of all citizens before the law, and of their equal legal capacity to be called to the different public employments. Joseph generally adds the destruction of the influence of priests, but Napoleon took good care not to proclaim it, as indeed he often vaunts that he was the restorer of throne and altar.

These ideas Napoleon had received from the revolution, and gradually he came to believe that the destruction of feudalism and the establishment of legal equality had been the sole object of "notre belle révolution," as he called it on one occasion. The identical error has been expressed by Louis Napoleon, who, shortly before he ascended the throne, declared that there was not a single day during which he did not study the works of his uncle, and endeavored to mould all his ideas and measures in conformity with that great model. On another occasion, when he ushered in his new constitution, the imitative emperor spoke of the great "génie," which, as by inspiration, had brought the true

and only national system for France, treating, at the same time, in terms of derogation and ridicule, all those who were of a different opinion, thus forestalling every idea of self-development from below upward. We do not believe in political Mahometanism.

Napoleon's hostility to "Gothic institutions" extended to all institutions, if we understand by them, legal establishments, with an independent organism of life and progress within themselves. He became the very apostle of absorbing centralism, the declared and uncompromising enemy of self-government in all its details, to self-development-in one word, to institutional, that is, to real liberty. We believe we are strictly correct in this opinion, and if we are, it is obvious that Napoleon was anything but a dictator. He was an absolute rulervery brilliant, very great, and, for that reason, only the more absolute and dangerous, and he established and wished to establish absolutism, with unprivileged equality, in some degree, beneath it. "Everything for the people, nothing by it." Napoleon unfortunately represented, intensely and absolutely, the vanity of the French, which maintained that an entire new era must needs be ushered in, and be ushered in through the French, forgetting to do the needful round-about, and that no introducer of a new era, has ever said so of himself. Self-praise is ruinous in the individual; in history it is a proof of inefficiency regarding the object of self-praise.

It is unnecessary to show here, however instructive to the political philosopher it would be, how the very system pursued by Napoleon insensibly led him into many of the abuses of the decried feudalism, against which he set out. The military superiority, his re-establishment of fiefs, and of a nobility, chiefly founded on military merit, show this among many other things. Nor did his hostility to corruption remain more consistent. He hated the roleurs, the peculators; but he allowed his generals to extort money in foreign parts, and he repeats, time after time, to Joseph, that he should enrich the generals, and see before all to the greatest possible well

being of the army, for both which purposes he must frapper le pays with a heavy contribution, and raise the taxes of Naples from fifty millions to at least a hundred millions. This is repeated again and again, for Joseph was slow in oppressing.*

We do not believe that a candid and reflecting man can read the volumes of Napoleon's correspondence, without coming to the conclusion, that with whatever ideas and intentions that extraordinary man may have set out, he ended as a worshipper of power, raising, as millions do in their different spheres, the means into the end-the great and ever-repeated fallacy of men and nations. The fundamental idea that the people are the substantive, and governments, systems, armies, nothing but means, wholly vanished from his mind. Force, power, glory, French glory, centered in him, came to be his idols; and soldiers,. money, people, system, were mere means to serve them.

We do not recollect in all these volumes, one expression about the melioration of the people. If there be, it has escaped us. The constant advice, iterated to the satiety of the reader, is: acquire force, so that the méchants fear, and the loyal esteem you. "Strength is what makes the people esteem governments, and love with nations only means esteem." These are his words.

At this stage, it may well be asked, was Napoleon a great statesman ? Every one knows that he was a gifted politician; but was he a great statesman, taking this comprehensive term in the highest meaning which it has acquired?

Great statesmanship, in the advanced state of our race, consists, in our opinion, of three main elements-of being what Schlegel said the true historian must be, namely, "the prophet of the past;" secondly, of using the given means for the highest purposes; of evoking new means, and of effecting great things with small means; lastly, of so shaping all measures and organizing all institutions, that by their inherent character they will lead to a higher future, which, in the political sphere of all nations belonging to the European family, is liberty, or

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