t his fault that it degenerated in the strong hands of
Napoleon. He named the three Consuls, refusing to be one himself, and
he passed into ceremonious obscurity as president of the Senate.

When the Emperor had quarrelled with his ablest advisers he regretted
that he had renounced the aid of such an auxiliary. He thought him
unfit to govern, for that requires sword and spurs; but he admitted
that Sieyes often had new and luminous ideas, and might have been
useful to him beyond all the ministers of the Empire. Talleyrand, who
disliked Sieyes, and ungenerously reproached him with cupidity, spoke
of him to Lord Brougham as the one statesman of the time. The best of
the political legacy of the Revolution has been his work. Others
pulled down, but he was a builder, and he closed in 1799 the era which
he had opened ten years before. In the history of political doctrine,
where almost every chapter has yet to be written, none will be more
valuable than the one that will show what is permanent and progressive
in the ideas that he originated.

* * * * *

It was the function of the constituent Assembly to recast the laws in
conformity with the Rights of Man, to abolish every survival of
absolutism, every heirloom of inorganic tradition, that was
inconsistent with them. In every department of State they were obliged
to make ruins, to remove them, and to raise a new structure from the
foundation. The transition from the reign of force to the reign of
opinion, from custom to principle, led to a new order through
confusion, uncertainty, and suspense. The efficacy of the coming
system was nowhere felt at first. The soldiers, who were so soon to
form the finest army ever known, ran away as soon as they saw a shot
fired. The prosperous finances of modern France began with bankruptcy.
But in one division of public life the Revolution not only made a bad
beginning, but went on, step by step, to a bad end, until, by civil
war and anarchy and tyranny, it had ruined its cause. The majority of
the clergy were true to the new ideas, and on some decisive occasions,
June 19 and August 4, promoted their victory. Many prelates were
enlightened reformers, and even Robespierre believed that the inferior
clergy were, in the bulk, democratic. Nevertheless the Assembly, by a
series of hostile measures, carefully studied, and long pursued,
turned them into implacable enemies, and thereby made the Revolution
odious to a