This reasoning put an end to the project, because neither the English cabinet nor the allied sovereigns were ready to adopt a decisive open line of policy. The ministers exulting at the progress of aristocratic domination, had no thought save that of wasting England’s substance by extravagant subsidies and supplies, taken without gratitude by the continental powers who held themselves no-ways bound thereby to uphold the common cause, which each secretly designed to make available for peculiar interests. Moreover they all still trembled before the conqueror and none would pledge themselves to a decided policy. Lord Wellington alone moved with a firm composure, the result of profound and well-understood calculations; yet his mind, naturally so dispassionate, was strangely clouded at this time by personal hatred of Napoleon. Where is the proof, or even probability, of that great man’s system of government being internally dependent upon “_the most extensive corruption ever established in any country_”? The annual expenditure of France was scarcely half that of England, and Napoleon rejected public loans which are the very life-blood of state corruption. He left no debt. Under him no man devoured the public substance in idleness merely because he was of a privileged class; the state servants were largely paid but they were made to labour effectually for the state. They did not eat their bread and sleep. His system of public accounts, remarkable for its exactness simplicity and comprehensiveness, was vitally opposed to public fraud, and therefore extremely unfavourable to corruption. Napoleon’s power was supported in France by that deep sense of his goodness as a sovereign, and that admiration for his genius which pervaded the poorer and middle classes of the people; by the love which they bore towards him, and still bear for his memory because he cherished the principles of a just equality. They loved him also for his incessant activity in the public service, his freedom from all private vices, and because his public works, wondrous for their number their utility and grandeur, never stood still; under him the poor man never wanted work. To France he gave noble institutions, a comparatively just code of laws, and glory unmatched since the days of the Romans. His _Cadastre_, more extensive and perfect than the Doomsday Book, that monument of the wisdom and greatness of our Norman Conqueror, was alone sufficient to endear him to the nation. Rapidly advancing under his vigorous superintendence, it registered and taught every man the true value and nature of his property, and all its liabilities public or private. It was designed and most ably adapted to fix and secure titles to property, to prevent frauds, to abate litigation, to apportion the weight of taxes equally and justly, to repress the insolence of the tax-gatherer without injury to the revenue, and to secure the sacred freedom of the poor man’s home. The French