r he reached Paris, that was meant to
conciliate the common people of the capital, was the theme of angry
comment among these martial circles. Such measures as he adopted in
deference to the prejudices of the old republican party, were heard of
with equal contempt. The pacific language of his first proclamations was
considered as a fair stratagem--and no more. To them the man was nothing
but as the type of the system: they desired to hear of nothing in France
but the great Caesar, and the legions to whom he owed his greatness, and
who had the same right to a new career of battles, as he to his Imperial
crown, at once the prize of past, and the pledge of future victories.

With the views of these spirits, eager for blood and plunder, and
scornful of all liberty but the licence of the camp, Napoleon was
engaged in the endeavour to reconcile the principles and prejudices of
men who had assisted in rebuilding his throne, only because they put
faith in the assertions of himself and his friends, that he had
thoroughly repented of the despotic system on which he had formerly
ruled France--that ten months of exile and reflection had convinced him
how much better it was to be the first citizen of a free state, than the
undisputed tyrant of half the world--in a word, that his only remaining
ambition was to atone for the violence of his first reign by the
mildness of his second. As a first step to fasten the goodwill of these
easy believers, he, immediately on arriving in Paris, proclaimed the
freedom of the press; but he soon repented of this concession. In spite
of all the watchfulness, and all the briberies of his police, he could
never bend to his own service the whole of this power. The pure
republicans--even the pure royalists--continued to have their organs;
and the daily appeals of either to the reason and the passions of a
people so long strange to the exercise of such influence, otherwise than
in subservience to the government of the time, whatever that might be,
produced such effects, that, almost from the time in which he bestowed
the boon, he was occupied with devising pretexts for its recall. He ere
long caused, perhaps, more resentment by some efforts to thwart the
conduct of the press, than would have resulted from the absolute
prolongation of its slavery. Some even of the decrees of Lyons were hard
to be reconciled with the professions of one who disclaimed any wish to
interfere with the sacred right of the nation