Emigres.--Progressive and final amnesty.--They return.--They
recover a portion of their possessions.--Many of them enter
the new hierarchy.--Indemnities for them incomplete.

The main thing now is to dress the severe wounds it has made and which
are still bleeding, with as little torture as possible, for it has cut
down to the quick, and its amputations, whether foolish or outrageous,
have left sharp pains or mute suffering in the social organism.

One hundred and ninety-two thousand names have been inscribed on the
list of emigres[3113] the terms of the law, every emigre is civilly
dead, and his possessions have become the property of the Republic;" if
he dared return to France, the same law condemned him to death; there
could be no appeal, petition, or respite; it sufficed to prove identity
and the squad of executioners was at once ordered out. Now, at the
beginning of the Consulate, this murderous law is still in force;
summary proceedings are always applicable,[3114] and one hundred
and forty-six thousand names still appear on the mortuary list. This
constitutes a loss to France of 146,000 Frenchmen, and not those of
the least importance--gentlemen, army and navy officers, members of
parliaments, priests, prominent men of all classes, conscientious
Catholics, liberals of 1789, Feuillantists of the Legislative assembly,
and Constitutionalists of the years III and V. Worse still, through
their poverty or hostility abroad, they are a discredit or even a danger
for France, as formerly with the Protestants driven out of the country
by Louis XIV.[3115]--To these 146,000 exiled Frenchmen add 200,000
or 300,000 others, residents, but semi-proscribed:[3116] First, those
nearly related and allied to each emigre, excluded by the law from
"every legislative, administrative, municipal and judicial function,"
and even deprived of the elective vote. Next, all former nobles or
ennobled, deprived by the law of their status as Frenchmen and obliged
to re-naturalize themselves according to the formalities.

It is, accordingly, almost the entire elite of old France which
is wanting in the new France, like a limb violently wrenched and
half-detached by the unskillful and brutal scalpel of the revolutionary
"sawbones"; for both the organ and the body are not only living, but
they are still feverish and extremely sensitive; it is important to
avoid too great irritation; inflammation of any kind would be dangerous.
A skilfu