departments
of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or principalities.
To show the absurdly fickle and ridiculously absurd appellations of our
shamefully perverted institutions, this Senate was called the
Conservative Senate; that is to say, it was to preserve the republican
consular constitution in its integrity, both against the; encroachments
of the executive and legislative power, both against the manoeuvres of
the factions, the plots of the royalists or monarchists, and the clamours
of a populace of levellers. But during the five years that these honest
wiseacres have been preserving, everything has perished--the Republic,
the Consuls, free discussions, free election, the political liberty, and
the liberty of the Press; all--all are found nowhere but in old, useless,
and rejected codes. They have, however, in a truly patriotic manner
taken care of their own dear selves. Their salaries are more than
doubled since 1799.

Besides mock Senators, mock praetors, mock quaestors, other 'nomina
libertatis' are revived, so as to make the loss of the reality so much
the more galling. We have also two curious commissions; one called "the
Senatorial Commission of Personal Liberty," and the other "the Senatorial
Commission of the Liberty of the Press." The imprisonment without cause,
and transportation without trial, of thousands of persons of both sexes
weekly, show the grand advantages which arise from the former of these
commissions; and the contents of our new books and daily prints evince
the utility and liberality of the latter.

But from the past conduct of these our Senators, members of these
commissions, one may easily conclude what is to be expected in future
from their justice and patriotism. Lenoin Laroche, at the head of the
one, was formerly an advocate of some practice, but attended more to
politics than to the business of his clients, and was, therefore, at the
end of the session of the first assembly (of which he was a member),
forced, for subsistence, to become the editor of an insignificant
journal. Here he preached licentiousness, under the name of Liberty, and
the agrarian law in recommending Equality. A prudent courtier of all
systems in fashion, and of all factions in power, he escaped
proscription, though not accusation of having shared in the national
robberies. A short time in the summer of 1797, after the dismissal of
Cochon, he acted as a Minister of Police; and in 1798 the J