“One cannot work with an institution so productive of disorder.  The constitution has created a legislative power composed of three bodies.  None of these branches has any right to organize itself:  that must be done by the law.  Therefore we must make a body which shall organize the manner of deliberations of these three branches.  The Tribunate ought to be divided into five sections.  The discussion of laws will take place secretly in each section:  one might even introduce a discussion between these sections and those of the Council of State.  Only the reporter will speak publicly.  Then things will go on reasonably.”

Having delivered this opinion, ex cathedra, he departed (January 7th, 1802) for Lyons, there to be invested with supreme authority in the reconstituted Cisalpine, or as it was now termed, Italian Republic[177]

Returning at the close of the month, radiant with the lustre of this new dignity, he was able to bend the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif to his will.  The renewal of their membership by one-fifth served as the opportunity for subjecting them to the more pliable Senate.  This august body of highly-paid members holding office for life had the right of nominating the new members; but hitherto the retiring members had been singled out by lot.  Roederer, acting on a hint of the time-serving Second Consul, now proposed in the Council of State that the retiring members of those Chambers should thenceforth be appointed by the Senate, and not by lot; for the principle of the lot, he quaintly urged, was hostile to the right of election which belonged to the Senate.  Against such conscious sophistry all the bolts of logic were harmless.  The question was left undecided, in order that the Senate might forthwith declare in favour of its own right to determine every year not only the elections to, but the exclusions from, the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif.  A senatus consultant of March legalized this monstrous innovation, which led to the exclusion from the Tribunate of zealous republicans like Benjamin Constant, Isnard, Ganilh, Daunou, and Chenier.  The infusion of the senatorial nominees served to complete the nullity of these bodies; and the Tribunate, the lineal descendant of the terrible Convention, was gagged and bound within eight years of the stilling of Danton’s mighty voice.

In days when civic zeal was the strength of the French Republic, the mere suggestion of such a violation of liberty would have cost the speaker his life.  But since the rise of Bonaparte, civic sentiments had yielded place to the military spirit and to boundless pride in the nation’s glory.  Whenever republican feelings were outraged, there were sufficient distractions to dissipate any of the sombre broodings which Bonaparte so heartily disliked; and an event of international importance now came to still the voice of political criticism.