feeling that the human heart can experience.
Another time he put the same question to a tribune, who, from the
desire of pleasing him, answered: "Well, general, if our enemies
take measures against us, we are in the right to do the same against
them;" not perceiving that this was tantamount to a confession that
the deed was atrocious. The first consul affected to consider this
act as dictated by reasons of state. One day, about this period, in
a discussion with an intelligent man about the plays of Corneille,
he said, "You see that the public safety, or to express it better,
that state necessity, has with the moderns been substituted in the
place of the fatality of the ancients: there is, for instance, such
a man, who naturally would be incapable of a crime, but political
circumstances impose it upon him as a law. Corneille is the only one
who has shewn, in his tragedies, an acquaintance with state
necessity; on that account, if he had lived in my time, I would have
made him my prime minister." All this appearance of good humour in
the discussion was intended to prove that there was nothing of
passion in the death of the Duke d'Enghien, and that circumstances,
meaning such as the head of the state is exclusively the judge of,
might cause and justify every thing. That there was nothing of
passion in his resolution about the Duke d'Enghien, is perfectly
true; people would have it that rage inspired the crime,--it had
nothing to do with it. By what could this rage have been provoked?
The Duke d'Enghien had in no way provoked the first consul:
Bonaparte hoped at first to have got hold of the Duke de Berry, who
it was said, was to have landed in Normandy, if Pichegru had given
him notice that it was a proper time. This prince is nearer the
throne than the Duke d'Enghien, and besides, he would by coming into
France have infringed the existing laws. It therefore suited
Bonaparte in every way better to have sacrificed him than the Duke
d'Enghien; but as he could not get at the first, he chose the
second, in discussing the matter in cold blood. Between the order
for carrying him off, and that for his execution, more than eight
days had elapsed, and Bonaparte ordered the punishment of the Duke
d'Enghien long beforehand, as coolly, as he has since sacrificed
millions of men to the caprices of his ambition. We now ask, what
were the motives of this horrible action, and I believe it is very
easy to penetrate them. First, Bonaparte w