Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume II. Walter Scott
the system now adopted by the French commissioners might bear a form corresponding to the destinies of the nation, and flattering to its vanity, it was borrowed from that of the Roman republic, an attempt to imitate which had already introduced many of the blunders and many of the crimes of the Revolution. The executive power was lodged in a council of five persons, termed Directors, to whom were to be consigned the conduct of peace and war, the execution of the laws, and the general administration of the government. They were permitted no share of the legislative authority.
This arrangement was adopted to comply with the jealousy of those, who, in the individual person of a single Director, holding a situation similar to that of the Stadtholder in Holland, or the President of the United States, saw something too closely approaching to a monarchical government. Indeed, it is said, Louvet warned them against establishing such an office, by assuring them, that when they referred the choice of the individual who was to hold it, to the nation at large, they would see the Bourbon heir elected.70 But the inconvenience of this pentarchy could not be disguised; and it seemed to follow as a necessary consequence of such a numerous executive council, either that there would be a schism, and a minority and majority established in that pre-eminent body of the state, where unity and vigour were chiefly requisite, or else that some one or two of the ablest and most crafty among the Directors would establish a supremacy over the others, and use them less as their colleagues than their dependents. The legislators, however, though they knew that the whole Roman empire was found insufficient to satiate the ambition of three men, yet appeared to hope that the concord and unanimity of their five directors might continue unbroken, though they had but one nation to govern; and they decided accordingly.
The executive power being thus provided for, the legislative body was to consist of two councils; one of Elders, as it was called, serving as a House of Lords; another of Youngers, which they termed, from its number, the Council of Five Hundred. Both were elective, and the difference of age was the only circumstance which placed a distinction betwixt the two bodies. The members of the Council of Five Hundred were to be at least twenty-five years old, a qualification which, after the seventh year of the Republic, was to rise to thirty years complete. In this assembly laws were to be first proposed; and, having received its approbation, they were to be referred to the Council of Ancients. The requisites to sit in the latter senate, were the age of forty years complete, and the being a married man or a widower. Bachelors, though above that age, were deemed unfit for legislation, perhaps from want of domestic experience.
The Council of Ancients had the power of rejecting the propositions laid before them by the Council of Five Hundred, or, by adopting and approving them, that of passing them into laws. These regulations certainly gained one great point, in submitting each proposed legislative enactment to two separate bodies, and of course, to mature and deliberate consideration. It is true, that neither of the councils had any especial character, or separate interest which could enable or induce the Ancients, as a body, to suggest to the Five Hundred a different principle of considering any proposed measure, from that which was likely to occur to them in their own previous deliberation. No such varied views, therefore, were to be expected, as must arise between assemblies composed of persons who differ in rank or fortune, and consequently view the same question in various and opposite lights. Still, delay and reconsideration were attained, before the irrevocable fiat was imposed upon any measure of consequence; and so far much was gained. An orator was supposed to answer all objections to the system of the two councils thus constituted, when he described that of the Juniors as being the imagination, that of the Ancients as being the judgment of the nation; the one designed to invent and suggest national measures, the other to deliberate and decide upon them. This was, though liable to many objections, an ingenious illustration indeed; but an illustration is not an argument, though often passing current as such.
On the whole, the form of the Constitution71 of the year Three, i. e. 1795, showed a greater degree of practical efficacy, sense, and consistency, than any of those previously suggested; and in the introduction, though there was the usual proclamation of the rights of man, his duties to the laws and to the social system were for the first time enumerated in manly and forcible language, intimating the desire of the framers of these institutions to put a stop to the continuation of revolutionary violence in future.
But the constitution, now promulgated, had a blemish common to all its predecessors; it was totally new, and unsanctioned by the experience either of France or any other country; a mere experiment in politics, the result of which could not be known until it had been put in exercise, and which, for many years at least, must be necessarily less the object of respect than of criticism. Wise legislators, even when lapse of time, alteration of manners, or increased liberality of sentiment, require corresponding alterations in the institutions of their fathers, are careful, as far as possible, to preserve the ancient form and character of those laws, into which they are endeavouring to infuse principles and a spirit accommodated to the altered exigencies and temper of the age. There is an enthusiasm in patriotism as well as in religion. We value institutions, not only because they are ours, but because they have been those of our fathers; and if a new constitution were to be presented to us, although perhaps theoretically showing more symmetry than that by which the nation had been long governed, it would be as difficult to transfer to it the allegiance of the people, as it would be to substitute the worship of a Madonna, the work of modern art, for the devotion paid by the natives of Saragossa to their ancient Palladium, Our Lady of the Pillar.
But the constitution of the year Three, with all its defects, would have been willingly received by the nation in general, as affording some security from the revolutionary storm, had it not been for a selfish and usurping device of the Thermidoriens to mutilate and render it nugatory at the very outset, by engrafting upon it the means of continuing the exercise of their own arbitrary authority. It must never be forgotten, that these conquerors of Robespierre had shared all the excesses of his party before they became his personal enemies; and that when deprived of their official situations and influence, which they were likely to be by a representative body freely and fairly elected, they were certain to be exposed to great individual danger.
Determined, therefore, to retain the power in their own hands, the Thermidoriens suffered, with an indifference amounting almost to contempt, the constitution to pass through, and be approved of by, the Convention. But, under pretence that it would be highly impolitic to deprive the nation of the services of men accustomed to public business, they procured [Aug. 22] two decrees to be passed; the first ordaining the electoral bodies of France to choose, as representatives to the two councils under the new constitution, at least two-thirds of the members presently sitting in Convention; and the second declaring, that in default of a return of two-thirds of the present deputies, as prescribed, the Convention themselves should fill up the vacancies out of their own body; in other words, should name a large proportion of themselves their own successors in legislative power.72
These decrees were sent down to the Primary Assemblies of the people, and every art was used to render them acceptable.
But the nation, and particularly the city of Paris, generally revolted at this stretch of arbitrary authority. They recollected, that all the members who had sat in the first National Assembly, so remarkable for talent, had been declared ineligible, on that single account, for the second legislative body; and now, men so infinitely the inferiors of those who were the colleagues of Mirabeau, Mounier, and other great names, presumed not only to declare themselves eligible by re-election, but dared to establish two-thirds of their number as indispensable ingredients of the legislative assemblies, which, according to the words alike and spirit of the constitution, ought to be chosen by the free voice of the people. The electors, and particularly those of the sections of Paris, angrily demanded to know, upon what public services the deputies of the Convention founded their title to a privilege so unjust and anomalous. Among the more active part of them, to whom the measure was chiefly to be ascribed, they saw but a few reformed Terrorists, who wished to retain the power of tyranny, though disposed to exercise it with some degree of moderation, and the loss of whose places might be possibly followed by that of their heads; in the others, they only beheld a flock of timid and discountenanced Helots, willing to purchase personal security at the sacrifice of
"Peut-être un jour, on vous nommerait un Bourbon." – Thiers, tom. viii., p. 10.
"Its authors were Lesage, Daunou, Boissy d'Anglas, Creuzée-Latouche, Berlier, Louvet, Lareveillèire-Lepaux, Languinais, Durand-Maillanne, Baudin des Ardennes, and Thibaudeau." – Thiers, tom. viii., p. 9.
Thiers, tom. viii., p. 13.