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History of Civilisation and Public Opinion
History of Civilisation and Public Opinion Author:William Alexander Mackinnon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 38 CHAPTER III. NAPOLEON. Vices of the Directory. — The Middle Classes become the Victims of that Power. — Habitual Dissoluteness of Manners. — Sanguina... more »ry Rule. — Dissolution by Bonaparte of the Republican Government. — Warlike Enthusiasm of the French. — Bonaparte's quick Insight into human Character. — His immense armed Force. — Public Opinion overawed and despised by him. — His fatal Ambition. — His Means of indulging it. — His Endeavour to restore the old monarchical System. — His Choice between War and Commerce. — He recognises the Power of Public Opinion when too late. — Difference between his Sentiments in Exile, and his Acts in Power. " The government of the Directory began by demoralising the power by which it was created, and continued its course by alternately corrupting and coercing the citizens of France. There was not an intriguant, male or female, not an ambitious speculator, not a public plunderer or dabbler in loans, or fraudulent contractor, that did not force his way to the congenial friendship of Barras, and into an intimacy with the ministers of the Directory. It was a national coterie of ' chiffoniers,' all seeking for gold in the mud and offal of the then most sensual capital in Christendom. This was a systemthat could not last. The royalist, the constitutional, and the republican parties, all formed their clubs. The Directory stood in the midst of these factions, with its intriguants and stock-jobbers. Barras, ' the rotten Barras,' as Napoleon called him, an ex-noble, had all the tastes, all the vices, and all the frivolity of the worn-out aristocracy of France; and while he was wallowing in this Sybarite luxury, and dining daily like Dives, the army and navy were living like Lazarus, without coats to cover their nakedness, or crumbs to satisfy ...« less