nterests.[306]

After the severe drilling of the last four years, the Chambers voted
nearly unanimously in favour of a Napoleonic dynasty. The Corps
Legislatif was not in session, and it was not convoked. The Senate,
after hearing Fouche's unmistakable hints, named a commission of its
members to report on hereditary rule, and then waited on events. These
were decided mainly in private meetings of the Council of State, where
the proposal met with some opposition from Cambaceres, Merlin, and
Thibaudeau. But of what avail are private remonstrances when in open
session opponents are dumb and supporters vie in adulation? In the
Tribunate, on April 23rd, an obscure member named Curee proposed the
adoption of the hereditary principle. One man alone dared openly to
combat the proposal, the great Carnot; and the opposition of Curee to
Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject champions of
popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst the literary rubbish of
the Roman Empire:

"Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."

The Tribunate named a commission to report; it was favourable to the
Bonapartes. The Senate voted in the same sense, three Senators alone,
among them Gregoire, Bishop of Blois, voting against it. Sieyes and
Lanjuinais were absent; but the well-salaried lord of the manor of
Crosne must have read with amused contempt the resolution of this
body, which he had designed to be the _guardian of the republican
constitution_:

"The French have conquered liberty: they wish to preserve their
conquest: they wish for repose after victory. They will owe this
glorious repose to the hereditary rule of a single man, who, raised
above all, is to defend public liberty, maintain equality, and
lower his fasces before the sovereignty of the people that
proclaims him."

In this way did France reduce to practice the dogma of Rousseau with
regard to the occasional and temporary need of a dictator.[307]

When the commonalty are so obsequious, any title can be taken by the
one necessary man. Napoleon at first affected to doubt whether the
title of Stadtholder would not be more seemly than that of Emperor;
and in one of the many conferences held on this topic, Miot de Melito
advocated the retention of the term Consul for its grand republican
simplicity. But it was soon seen that the term Emperor was the only
one which satisfied Napoleon's ambition and French love of splendour.