his reforms; he
declined to make what children call "an Indian gift" to his people:
but the effect of the divided counsels by which he was embarrassed
was that these reforms were accepted by the public merely as
experiments, to be tried during good behavior, and not as the basis
of a new system definitively entered upon.

All through the year 1869 the difficulties of the course which the
emperor adopted grew greater and greater. The emancipated Press
was rampant. It knew no pity and no decency. Its articles on the
emperor's failing health (which he insisted upon reading) were
cruel in the extreme. Terrible anxieties for the future must have
haunted him. If his project for self-government in France must
prove a failure, when he was dead, what then? Could a child and a
woman govern as he had done by a despotic will? He had done so in
his days of health and strength; but events now seemed to intimate
that his government had been a failure rather than a success.

Lord Palmerston, writing from Paris in Charles X.'s time, said:
"Bonaparte in the last years of his reign crushed every one else,
both in politics and war. He allowed no one to think and act but
himself."

Somewhat the same remark could be applied to the Third Napoleon.
But Napoleon I. was a great administrator as well as a great general;
his activity was inexhaustible, he corresponded with everybody, he
looked after everything, he knew whether he was well or ill served;
and his mode of obtaining power did not hinder his availing himself
of the best talent in France. The case of his nephew was the reverse
of this. His highest quality was his tenacity of purpose, and his
disposition was inclined to kindly tolerance, even of pecuniary
greed and slipshod service. He could rouse himself to great exertion;
but in the later days of Imperialism, pain and his decaying physical
powers had rendered him inert; moreover, in his general habits he had
always been indolent and pleasure-loving. In carrying out the _coup
d'etat_ nine tenths of the public men in France had been subjected
to humiliations and indignities, by which they were permanently
outraged, and a host of co-conspirators and adventurers had acquired
claims upon the emperor that it was not safe to disregard. Places
and money were distributed among them with reckless profusion, and
many a shady money transaction, throwing discredit on some men
high in favor with the emperor, was passed over, to avoid exposure.