ief engineer: all these
powers were set in motion on the initiative of the Government; and the
proposals for its laws, or _senatus consulta,_ were discussed in the
Cabal of the Council of State named by the First Consul. This
precaution might have been deemed superfluous by a ruler less careful
about details than Napoleon; the composition of the Senate was such as
to assure its pliability; for though it continued to renew its ranks
by co-optation, yet that privilege was restricted in the following
way: from the lists of candidates for the Senate sent up by the
electoral colleges of the Departments, Napoleon selected three for
each seat vacant; one of those three must be chosen by the Senate.
Moreover, the First Consul was to be allowed directly to nominate
forty members in addition to the eighty prescribed by the constitution
of 1799. Thus, by direct or indirect means, the Senate soon became a
strict Napoleonic preserve, to which only the most devoted adherents
could aspire. And yet, such is the vanity of human efforts, it was
this very body which twelve years later was to vote his
deposition.[178]

The victory of action over talk, of the executive over the
legislature, of the one supremely able man over the discordant and
helpless many, was now complete. The process was startlingly swift;
yet its chief stages are not difficult to trace. The orators of the
first two National Assemblies of France, after wrecking the old royal
authority, were constrained by the pressure of events to intrust the
supervision of the executive powers to important committees, whose
functions grew with the intensity of the national danger. Amidst the
agonies of 1793, when France was menaced by the First Coalition, the
Committee of Public Safety leaped forth as the ensanguined champion of
democracy; and, as the crisis, developed in intensity, this terrible
body and the Committee of General Security virtually governed France.

After the repulse of the invaders and the fall of Robespierre, the
return to ordinary methods was marked by the institution of the
Directory, when five men, chosen by the legislature, controlled the
executive powers and the general policy of the Republic: that
compromise was forcibly ended by the stroke of Brumaire. Three Consuls
then seized the reins, and two years later a single charioteer gripped
the destinies of France. His powers were, in fact, ultimately derived
from those of the secret committees of the terrorists.