I have taken the liberty thus to speak of a scourge of society of which I have been a victim.  What I here state may be relied on.  I shall not speak of the week during which I had to discharge the functions of Prefect of Police, namely, from the 13th to the 20th of March 1816.  It may well be supposed that though I had not held in abhorrence the infamous system which I have described, the important nature of the circumstances and the short period of my administration must have prevented me from making complete use of the means placed at my disposal.  The dictates of discretion, which I consider myself bound to obey, forbid me giving proofs of what I advance.  What it was necessary to do I accomplished without employing violent or vexatious means; and I can take on myself to assert that no one has cause to complain of me.  Were I to publish the list of the persons I had orders to arrest, those of them who are yet living would be astonished that the only knowledge they had of my being the Prefect of Police was from the Moniteur.  I obtained by mild measures, by persuasion, and reasoning what I could never have got by violence.  I am not divulging any secrets of office, but I believe I am rendering a service to the public in pointing out what I have often observed while an unwilling confidant in the shameful manoeuvres of that political institution.

The word ideologue was often in Bonaparte’s mouth; and in using it he endeavoured to throw ridicule on those men whom he fancied to have a tendency towards the doctrine of indefinite perfectibility.  He esteemed them for their morality, yet he looked on them as dreamers seeking for the type of a universal constitution, and considering the character of man in the abstract only.  The ideologues, according to him, looked for power in institutions; and that he called metaphysics.  He had no idea of power except in direct force:  All benevolent men who speculate on the amelioration of human society were regarded by Bonaparte as dangerous, because their maxims and principles were diametrically opposed to the harsh and arbitrary system he had adopted.  He said that their hearts were better than their heads, and, far from wandering with them in abstractions, he always said that men were only to be governed by fear and interest.  The free expression of opinion through the press has been always regarded by those who are not led away by interest or power as useful to society.  But Bonaparte held the liberty of the press in the greatest horror; and so violent was his passion when anything was urged in its favour that he seemed to labour under a nervous attack.  Great man as he was, he was sorely afraid of little paragraphs.