_Cadastre_, although not original, would from its comprehensiveness, have been when completed the greatest boon ever conferred upon a civilized nation by a statesman. To say that the emperor was supported by his soldiers, is to say that he was supported by the people; because the law of conscription, that mighty staff on which France leaned when all Europe attempted to push her down, the conscription, without which she could never have sustained the dreadful war of antagonist principles entailed upon her by the revolution; that energetic law, which he did not establish but which he freed from abuse, and rendered great, national, and endurable by causing it to strike equally on all classes, the conscription made the soldiers the real representatives of the people. The troops idolized Napoleon, well they might, and to assert that their attachment commenced only when they became soldiers, is to acknowledge that his excellent qualities and greatness of mind turned hatred into devotion the moment he was approached. But Napoleon never was hated by the people of France; he was their own creation and they loved him so as never monarch was loved before. His march from Cannes to Paris, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of poor men, who were not soldiers, can never be effaced or even disfigured. For six weeks, at any moment, a single assassin might by a single shot have acquired the reputation of a tyrannicide, and obtained vast rewards besides from the trembling monarchs and aristocrats of the earth, who scrupled not to instigate men to the shameful deed. Many there were base enough to undertake but none so hardy as to execute the crime, and Napoleon, guarded by the people of France, passed unharmed to a throne from whence it required a million of foreign bayonets to drive him again. From the throne they drove him, but not from the thoughts and hearts of men. Lord Wellington having shaken off the weight of the continental policy, proceeded to consider the question of invading France simply as a military operation, which might conduce to or militate against the security of the Peninsula while Napoleon’s power was weakened by the war in Germany; and such was his inflexible probity of character, that no secret ambitious promptings, no facility of gaining personal reputation, diverted him from this object, all the renown of which he already enjoyed, the embarrassments mortifications and difficulties, enormous, although to the surface-seeing public there appeared none, alone remaining.