sion, two individuals in one: the
Republican general, who was obliged to appear the advocate of liberty and
the principles of the Revolution; and the votary of ambition, secretly
plotting the downfall of that liberty and those principles.

I often wondered at the consummate address with which he contrived to
deceive those who were likely to see through his designs. This
hypocrisy, which some, perhaps, may call profound policy, was
indispensable to the accomplishment of his projects; and sometimes, as if
to keep himself in practice, he would do it in matters of secondary
importance. For example, his opinion of the insatiable avarice of Sieyes
is well known; yet when he proposed, in his message to the Council of
Ancients, to give his colleague, under the title of national recompense,
the price of his obedient secession, it was, in the words of the message,
a recompense worthily bestowed on his disinterested virtues.

While at the Luxembourg Bonaparte showed, by a Consular act, his hatred
of the liberty of the press above all liberties, for he loved none.
On the 27th Nivose the Consuls, or rather the First Consul, published a
decree, the real object of which was evidently contrary to its implied
object.

This decree stated that:

The Consuls of the Republic, considering that some of the journals
printed at Paris are instruments in the hands of the enemies of the
Republic, over the safety of which the Government is specially entrusted
by the people of France to watch, decree--

That the Minister of Police shall, during the continuation of the war,
allow only the following journals to be printed and published, viz.
(list of 20 publications)

.....and those papers which are exclusively devoted to science, art,
literature, commerce, and advertisements.

Surely this decree may well be considered as preparatory; and the
fragment I have quoted may serve as a standard for measuring the greater
part of those acts by which Bonaparte sought to gain, for the
consolidation of his power, what he seemed to be seeking solely for the
interest of the friends of the Republic. The limitation to the period of
the continuance of the war had also a certain provisional air which
afforded hope for the future. But everything provisional is, in its
nature, very elastic; and Bonaparte knew how to draw it out ad infinitum.
The decree, moreover, enacted that if any of the uncondemned journals
should insert articles against the sovereignty of th