years of his reign may be said
to have been twofold. He wanted to make France increase in material
prosperity, and he wished to have money freely spent within her
borders. He set on foot all kinds of improvements in Paris, and
all kinds of useful enterprises in the provinces. Work was plenty;
money flowed freely; the empire was everywhere popular. But the
government of France was the government of one man; and if anything
happened to that one man, where would be the government? There
seemed no need to ask that question while France was prosperous
and Paris gay. France under the Second Empire was quieter than
she had been for any eighteen years since the Great Revolution;
and for that she was grateful to Napoleon III.

His foreign policy was still more successful. "The Empire is peace,"
he had early proclaimed to be his motto. At first the idea of a
Napoleon on the throne of France had greatly terrified the nations;
but by degrees it seemed as if he really meant to be the Napoleon
of Peace, as his uncle had been the Napoleon of War. He took every
opportunity of reiterating his desire to be on good terms with
his neighbors. With respect to England, those who knew him best
asserted earnestly that he had always been in sympathy with the
country that had sheltered him in exile. Count Walewski, whom he sent
over as ambassador to London, was very popular there. He attended
the funeral of the Duke of Wellington in his official capacity,
and in return for this courtesy England restored to the French
emperor his uncle's will, which had been laid up in Doctor's Commons
with other wills of persons who had died on English soil. Russia
was haughty to the new emperor; but the other courts of Europe
accepted him, and most of them did so with considerable alacrity;
for was he not holding down Socialism and Internationalism, which
they dreaded far more than Napoleonism, and by which they were
menaced in their own lands?

The great perplexity of the new emperor was his relation to Italy.
He and his brother had taken the oaths of a Carbonaro in that country,
in 1831. It is not to this day certain that his brother did not die
by a Carbonaro's knife, rather than by the measles. Be that as
it may, Louis Napoleon knew that if he failed to keep his promises
as to the liberation of Italy, assassination awaited him.

How he endeavored to reconcile his engagements as a Carbonaro with
his policy as the French emperor belongs less to the histori