practicable
in the application of principles, and not for the speculative and
hypothetical." Such were the memorable words of Bonaparte to his
Council of State at one of its early meetings. They strike the keynote
of the era of the Consulate. It was a period of intensely practical
activity that absorbed all the energies of France and caused the
earlier events of the Revolution to fade away into a seemingly remote
past. The failures of the civilian rulers and the military triumphs of
Bonaparte had exerted a curious influence on the French character,
which was in a mood of expectant receptivity. In 1800 everything was
in the transitional state that favours the efforts of a master
builder; and one was now at hand whose constructive ability in civil
affairs equalled his transcendent genius for war.

I propose here briefly to review the most important works of
reconstruction which render the Consulate and the early part of the
Empire for ever famous. So vast and complex were Bonaparte's efforts
in this field that they will be described, not chronologically, but
subject by subject. The reader will, however, remember that for the
most part they went on side by side, even amidst the distractions
caused by war, diplomacy, colonial enterprises, and the myriad details
of a vast administration. What here appears as a series of canals was
in reality a mighty river of enterprise rolling in undivided volume
and fed by the superhuman vitality of the First Consul. It was his
inexhaustible curiosity which compelled functionaries to reveal the
secrets of their office: it was his intelligence that seized on the
salient points of every problem and saw the solution: it was his
ardour and mental tenacity which kept his Ministers and committees
hard at work, and by toil of sometimes twenty hours a day supervised
the results: it was, in fine, his passion for thoroughness, his
ambition for France, that nerved every official with something of his
own contempt of difficulties, until, as one of them said, "the
gigantic entered into our very habits of thought."[149]

The first question of political reconstruction which urgently claimed
attention was that of local government. On the very day when it was
certain that the nation had accepted the new constitution, the First
Consul presented to the Legislature a draft of a law for regulating
the affairs of the Departments. It must be admitted that local
self-government, as instituted by the men of 178