It only remained to invent an Executive. In the other parts of his Constitution, Siéyès had borrowed from Rome, from Greece, and from Venice; in his Executive he improved upon the political theories of Great Britain. He proposed that the Government should consist of two Consuls and a Great Elector; the Elector, like an English king, appointing and dismissing the Consuls, but taking no active part in the administration himself. The Consuls were to be respectively restricted to the affairs of peace and of war. Grotesque under every aspect, the Constitution of Siéyès was really calculated to effect in all points but one the end which he had in view. His object was to terminate the convulsions of France by depriving every element in the State of the power to create sudden change. The members of his body politic, a Council that could only draft, a Tribunate that could only discuss, a Legislature that could only vote, Yes or No, were impotent for mischief; and the nation itself ceased to have a political existence as soon as it had selected its half-million notables. [Siéyès and Bonaparte.] So far, nothing could have better suited the views of Bonaparte; and up to this point Bonaparte quietly accepted Siéyès' plan. But the general had his own scheme for what was to follow. Siéyès might apportion the act of deliberation among debating societies and dumb juries to the full extent of his own ingenuity; but the moment that he applied his disintegrating method to the Executive, Bonaparte swept away the flimsy reasoner, and set in the midst of his edifice of shadows the reality of an absolute personal rule. The phantom Elector, and the Consuls who were to be the Elector's tenants-at-will, corresponded very little to the power which France desired to see at its head. "Was there ever anything so ridiculous?" cried Bonaparte. "What man of spirit could accept such a post?" It was in vain that Siéyès had so nicely set the balance. His theories gave to France only the pageants which disguised the extinction of the nation beneath a single will: the frame of executive government which the country received in 1799 was that which Bonaparte deduced from the conception of an absolute central power. The First Consul summed up all executive authority in his own person. By his side there were set two colleagues whose only function was to advise. A Council of State placed the highest skill and experience in France at the disposal of the chief magistrate, without infringing upon his sovereignty. All offices, both in the Ministries of State and in the provinces, were filled by the nominees of the First Consul. No law could be proposed but at his desire. [Contrast of the Institutions of 1791 and 1799.] [Centralisation of 1799.]