The members of the Bonaparte family were an immense expense to the emperor, and gave him no little trouble.  They were not the least thirsty among those who thronged around the fountain of wealth and honor; and their importunate demands upon the emperor’s bounty led to a perpetual and reckless waste of money.  The empress frequently remonstrated with her husband in regard to his lavish largesses and too generous expenditure.  Contrary to what has been generally supposed, she was herself orderly and methodical in her expenditures and accounts, always carefully examining her bills, and though by the emperor’s express desire she always expended the large amount annually allowed her, she never exceeded that sum.

Unhappily, the revived imperialism of Louis Napoleon was not, like Legitimacy, a cause, but to most persons who supported it, it was a speculation.  Adherents had therefore to be attracted to it by hopes of gain, and all services had to be handsomely rewarded.

The emperor’s policy in the early years of his reign may be said to have been twofold.  He wanted to make France increase in material prosperity, and he wished to have money freely spent within her borders.  He set on foot all kinds of improvements in Paris, and all kinds of useful enterprises in the provinces.  Work was plenty; money flowed freely; the empire was everywhere popular.  But the government of France was the government of one man; and if anything happened to that one man, where would be the government?  There seemed no need to ask that question while France was prosperous and Paris gay.  France under the Second Empire was quieter than she had been for any eighteen years since the Great Revolution; and for that she was grateful to Napoleon III.

His foreign policy was still more successful.  “The Empire is peace,” he had early proclaimed to be his motto.  At first the idea of a Napoleon on the throne of France had greatly terrified the nations; but by degrees it seemed as if he really meant to be the Napoleon of Peace, as his uncle had been the Napoleon of War.  He took every opportunity of reiterating his desire to be on good terms with his neighbors.  With respect to England, those who knew him best asserted earnestly that he had always been in sympathy with the country that had sheltered him in exile.  Count Walewski, whom he sent over as ambassador to London, was very popular there.  He attended the funeral of the Duke of Wellington in his official capacity, and in return for this courtesy England restored to the French emperor his uncle’s will, which had been laid up in Doctor’s Commons with other wills of persons who had died on English soil.  Russia was haughty to the new emperor; but the other courts of Europe accepted him, and most of them did so with considerable alacrity; for was he not holding down Socialism and Internationalism, which they dreaded far more than Napoleonism, and by which they were menaced in their own lands?