poleon's life;
for, as the opportunist Jacobins argued, if the hereditary system were
adopted, conspiracies to murder would be meaningless, when, even if they
struck down one man, they must fail to shatter the system that
guaranteed the Revolution.

The cue having been thus dextrously given, appeals and petitions for
hereditary rule began to pour in from all parts of France. The grand
work of the reorganization of France certainly furnished a solid claim
on the nation's gratitude. The recent promulgation of the Civil Code
and the revival of material prosperity redounded to Napoleon's glory;
and with equal truth and wit he could claim the diadem as a fit reward
_for having revived many interests while none had been displaced._
Such a remark and such an exploit proclaim the born ruler of men. But
the Senate overstepped all bounds of decency when it thus addressed
him: "You are founding a new era: but you ought to make it last for
ever: splendour is nothing without duration." The Greeks who fawned on
Persian satraps did not more unman themselves than these pensioned
sycophants, who had lived through the days of 1789 but knew them not.
This fulsome adulation would be unworthy of notice did it not convey
the most signal proof of the danger which republics incur when men
lose sight of the higher aims of life and wallow among its sordid
interests.[306]

After the severe drilling of the last four years, the Chambers voted
nearly unanimously in favour of a Napoleonic dynasty. The Corps
Legislatif was not in session, and it was not convoked. The Senate,
after hearing Fouche's unmistakable hints, named a commission of its
members to report on hereditary rule, and then waited on events. These
were decided mainly in private meetings of the Council of State, where
the proposal met with some opposition from Cambaceres, Merlin, and
Thibaudeau. But of what avail are private remonstrances when in open
session opponents are dumb and supporters vie in adulation? In the
Tribunate, on April 23rd, an obscure member named Curee proposed the
adoption of the hereditary principle. One man alone dared openly to
combat the proposal, the great Carnot; and the opposition of Curee to
Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject champions of
popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst the literary rubbish of
the Roman Empire:

"Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."

The Tribunate named a commission to report; it was fa