n of the right of entail. The connection between the two
lies in the tendency of both: merging tribunate and legislature made
it easy to substitute for an elective senate a hereditary house of
lords. Feeling himself sufficiently strong, Napoleon clearly intended
to gratify in others the weak human pride which, as Montesquieu says,
desires the eternity of a name, and thereby to erect a four-square
foundation for the perpetuity of his own dynasty. The brothers Joseph,
Louis, and Jerome were now no longer Bonapartes, but Napoleons, ruling
as Joseph Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, Jerome Napoleon, over their
respective fiefs. Murat, the brother-in-law, was already provided for
in the same way, and there were three reigning princes among the
satellites of the imperial throne. All these could transmit their name
and dominions in the line of hereditary succession. It may be read in
the "Moniteur" of July, 1810, that, in whatever position they were
placed by Napoleon's politics and the interest of his empire, their
first duty was to him, their second to France. "All your other duties,
even those to the people I may intrust to you, are only secondary."

Ten years earlier General Bonaparte had declared that what the French
wanted was glory and the gratification of their vanity; of liberty, he
said, they knew nothing. The Emperor Napoleon, in one of his spoken
musings, applied the same conception to all continental Europeans,
saying that there were everywhere a few men who knew what freedom was
and longed to secure it; but that the masses needed paternal guidance,
and enjoyed it as long as they were comfortable. The asylum of this
enlightened minority in France was for a time the tribunate; to many
it seemed that, if free government be government by discussion, in
the tribunate alone was any semblance of freedom left; its name had
consequently retained a halo of nobility, and its mere existence was a
comfort to the few who still recalled the ideals of the Revolution.
But, in truth, the body itself had ceased to have any dignity
whatsoever. The system of legislation was briefly this: from the
throne came a message exposing the situation of the country, the
council of state then formulated the measures set forth as necessary,
the tribunate approved them in one or other of its sections, and the
legislature gave the enacting vote. The suppression of the tribunate,
therefore, appeared to the general public like final proceedings in
bankruptc