Here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the
powers of intellect without conscience. Never was such a leader so
endowed, and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers.
And what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense
armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of
men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to no result. All passed away,
like the smoke of his artillery and left no trace. He left France
smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole contest for
freedom was to be begun again. The attempt was, in principle, suicidal.
France served him with life, and limb, and estate, as long as it could
identify its interest with him; but when men saw that after victory
was another war; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions;
and they who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to the
reward,--they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their
down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,--they deserted him. Men found
that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled
the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes
hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand,
so that the man cannot open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new
and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So,
this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power
and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of France,
and of Europe, in 1814, was, "enough of him;" "assez de Bonaparte."

It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in him lay, to live and
thrive without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal
law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the
result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment,
by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim,
will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious