Yet this man, like Augustus, had an opportunity of earthly redemption afforded him; and, while he fabricated for himself a splendid fortune, might have deserved the gratitude of Europe, not only in the existing generation, but through after ages. When he had attained the supreme authority, he might have restored the Bourbons in France, and taken Italy for his own reward: an arrangement, for which no fresh act of injustice would have been required; which none whom it offended would have been able to oppose; and which, more than any other conceivable alteration in the state of Christendom, might have tended to the general good. Here was an object worthy of ambition, and a richer prize than military ambition had ever yet achieved: so great would have been the public benefit; so signal and durable the individual glory. Even if, incapable as he was of aiming at such true greatness, he could have contented himself with the situation in which he was recognized by the peace of Amiens, and have borne his faculties meekly in that unexampled elevation, the world is charitable to all extremes of fortune, and would have forgiven his former crimes; which, public and notorious as they were, were loudly denied by his advocates, and already disbelieved by his infatuated admirers. But the heart of Napoleon Buonaparte was evil; he regarded his fellow-creatures merely as instruments for gratifying his desire of empire, ... pieces with which he played the game of war: in the presumptuousness of his power he set man at defiance, and in his philosophy God was left out of the account. Unhappily, the internal circumstances of France accorded but too well in all things with the disposition and the views of its autocrat. ♦MILITARY POWER OF FRANCE.♦ The revolutionary governments, through all their changes, had steadily pursued the favourite object of placing the military establishment of the country upon the most formidable footing, and thereby enabling France to give laws to the rest of Europe. During the first years, immense armies were filled with enthusiastic volunteers; and before that spirit exhausted itself, provision was made for permanently supporting so disproportionate a force by means of the conscription. The conscription originated in Prussia, when Prussia was under a mere military despotism; it was now carried to its utmost extent in France. The law declared that every Frenchman was a soldier, and bound to defend his country; but the principle of general law which the latter clause of the sentence announces served to introduce a code, whereby the whole youth of France were placed at the disposal of the government, to be sent whithersoever its ambitious projects might extend, ... to the sands of Egypt, or the snows of Moscovy. A view of this system will equally elucidate the strength, the resources, and the character, of the French government during these disastrous years. ♦SYSTEM OF MILITARY CONSCRIPTION.♦