were to be chosen by authority from their respective lists. The
_Conservative Senate_, composed of eighty members, self-elective, had the
right of appointing the members of the Corps Legislatif, the Tribuneship,
and the Court of Cassation. It was besides destined to the honor of
choosing the Great Elector. The senators, richly endowed, might exercise
no other function. The Corps Legislatif was dumb, and limited to voting
the laws prepared by the Council of State, and discussed by the Tribunate.
The Great Elector, without actively interfering in the government,
furnished with a civil list of six millions, and magnificently housed by
the state, appointed the two councils of peace and war, upon whom depended
the ministers and all the administrative _personnel_ of prefects and sub-
prefects entrusted with the government of the departments. In case the
magistrate, so highly placed in his sumptuous indolence, should seem to
menace the safety of the State, the Senate was authorized to _absorb_ him
by admitting him into its ranks. The same action might be exercised with
respect to any of the civil or military functionaries.

So many complicated wheels calculated to hinder rather than to sustain
each other, so much pomp in words and so little efficacy in action, could
never suit the intentions or the character of General Bonaparte. He
claimed at once the position of Great Elector, which Sieyes had perhaps
secretly thought to reserve for himself.

"What!" said he, "would you want to make me a pig in a dunghill?" Then
demolishing the edifice laboriously constructed by the legislator, "Your
Great Elector is a slothful king," said he to Sieyes; "the time for that
sort of thing is past. What! appoint people to act, and not act himself!
It won't do. If I were this Great Elector I should certainly do everything
which you would desire me not to do. I should say to the two consuls of
peace and war: 'If you don't choose such and such a man, or take such and