expulsion of sixty-one members from the Councils, the nomination of
Sieyès, Roger Ducos, and Bonaparte as provisional Consuls and the
adjournment of the Councils for four months. The Consuls accordingly
took up their residence in the Luxemburg Palace, just vacated by the
Directors, and the drafting of a constitution was confided to them and
to an _interim_ commission of fifty members chosen equally from the
two Councils.

The illegality of these devices was hidden beneath a cloak of politic
clemency. To this commission the Consuls, or rather Bonaparte--for
his will soon dominated that of Sieyès--proposed two most salutary
changes. He desired to put an end to the seizure of hostages from
villages suspected of royalism; and also to the exaction of taxes
levied on a progressive scale, which harassed the wealthy without
proportionately benefiting the exchequer. These two expedients,
adopted by the Directory in the summer of 1799, were temporary
measures adopted to stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts;
but they were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, and
their removal greatly strengthened the new consular rule. The blunder
of nearly all the revolutionary governments had been in continuing
severe laws after the need for them had ceased to be pressing.
Bonaparte, with infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will
shortly appear, set himself to found his government on the support of
that vast neutral mass which was neither royalist nor Jacobin, which
hated the severities of the reds no less than the abuses of the
_ancien régime_.

While Bonaparte was conciliating the many, Sieyès was striving to body
forth the constitution which for many years had been nebulously
floating in his brain. The function of the Socratic [Greek: maieutaes]