‘The details of his life are notorious, and we omit them. The community of which Buonaparte was in his early days a member, and the military education which he received, may, independently of any original bias of character, have laid the foundation of the greatness to which he attained, and of that mischievous application of unbridled power, through which he fell very nearly to the level whence he first had started. Nothing could be more corrupt than the morals of military society among the French before the Revolution--nothing more selfish, or contracted, than the views (at all times) of a thoroughbred military adventurer. ‘Buonaparte came into active life with as much (but we have no reason to think a larger share of) lax morality and pure selfishness as others of his age and calling. The public crisis into which he was thrown, gave to profound selfishness the form of insatiable ambition. With talents and enterprise beyond all comparison greater than any against which he had to contend, he overthrew whatever opposed his progress. Thus, ambition in him was more conspicuous than others, only because it was more successful. He became a sovereign. How, then, was this pupil of a military school prepared to exercise the functions of sovereignty? An officer, as such, has no idea of divided power. His patriotism is simply love of his troops and his profession. He will obey commands--he will issue them--but, in both cases, those commands are absolute. Talk to him of deliberation, of debate, of freedom of action, of speech, nay, of opinion--his _feeling_ is, that the body to which any of these privileges shall be accessible, must fall into confusion, and be speedily destroyed. ‘Whatever pretexts may have been resorted to by Buonaparte--whatever Jacobin yells he may have joined in, to assist his own advance towards power--every subsequent act of his life assures us, that the military prepossessions in which he was educated, became those by which he was influenced as a statesman; and we are well persuaded of his conviction, that it was impossible for any country, above all, for France, to be governed otherwise than by one sole authority--undivided and unlimited. It may, we confess, be no satisfaction to the French, nor any great consolation to the rest of Europe, to know through what means it was, or by what vicious training, that Buonaparte was fitted, nay, predestined almost, to be a scourge and destroyer of the rights of nations, instead of employing a power irresistible, and which, in such a cause, none would have felt disposed to resist, for the promotion of knowledge, peace, and liberty throughout the world.