Such are the characteristics of men whose ‘senatus consultum’ bestows an Emperor on France, a King on Italy, makes of principalities departments of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or principalities.  To show the absurdly fickle and ridiculously absurd appellations of our shamefully perverted institutions, this Senate was called the Conservative Senate; that is to say, it was to preserve the republican consular constitution in its integrity, both against the; encroachments of the executive and legislative power, both against the manoeuvres of the factions, the plots of the royalists or monarchists, and the clamours of a populace of levellers.  But during the five years that these honest wiseacres have been preserving, everything has perished—­the Republic, the Consuls, free discussions, free election, the political liberty, and the liberty of the Press; all—­all are found nowhere but in old, useless, and rejected codes.  They have, however, in a truly patriotic manner taken care of their own dear selves.  Their salaries are more than doubled since 1799.

Besides mock Senators, mock praetors, mock quaestors, other ’nomina libertatis’ are revived, so as to make the loss of the reality so much the more galling.  We have also two curious commissions; one called “the Senatorial Commission of Personal Liberty,” and the other “the Senatorial Commission of the Liberty of the Press.”  The imprisonment without cause, and transportation without trial, of thousands of persons of both sexes weekly, show the grand advantages which arise from the former of these commissions; and the contents of our new books and daily prints evince the utility and liberality of the latter.

But from the past conduct of these our Senators, members of these commissions, one may easily conclude what is to be expected in future from their justice and patriotism.  Lenoin Laroche, at the head of the one, was formerly an advocate of some practice, but attended more to politics than to the business of his clients, and was, therefore, at the end of the session of the first assembly (of which he was a member), forced, for subsistence, to become the editor of an insignificant journal.  Here he preached licentiousness, under the name of Liberty, and the agrarian law in recommending Equality.  A prudent courtier of all systems in fashion, and of all factions in power, he escaped proscription, though not accusation of having shared in the national robberies.  A short time in the summer of 1797, after the dismissal of Cochon, he acted as a Minister of Police; and in 1798 the Jacobins elected him a member of the Council of Ancients, where he, with other deputies, sold himself to Bonaparte, and was, in return, rewarded with a place in the Senate.  Under monarchy he was a republican, and under a Republic he extolled monarchical institutions.  He wished to be singular, and to be rich.  Among so many shocking originals, however, he was not distinguished; and among so many philosophical marauders, he had no opportunity to pillage above two millions of livres.  This friend of liberty is now one of the most despotic Senators, and this lover of equality never answers when spoken to, if not addressed as “His Excellency,” or “Monseigneur.”