This consular government was a magnificent machine, capable of accomplishing wonders when controlled by an able ruler. The gist of it was concentration and uniformity. All the strength of the nation was placed at the disposal of its chief. He could plan and execute, legislate and enforce legislation, declare war and marshal armies, and make peace. He was master at home and abroad. In him was centred France. He laid down her laws, fixed her taxes, dictated her system of schools, superintended her roads and bridges, policed her towns and cities, licensed her books, named the number of her armies; pensioned the old, the weak, and the deserving; censored her press, controlled rewards and punishments,--his finger ever on the pulse-beat of the nation, his will its master, his ideals its inspiration. No initiative remained with the people. Political liberty was a reminiscence. The town bridge could not be rebuilt or the lights of the village changed without authority granted from the Consul or his agents. “Confidence coming from below; power descending from above,” was the principle of the new Sieyès system. Under just such a scheme it was possible that it might happen that the power of the ruler would continue to come down long after the confidence of the subject had ceased to go up. The Revolution had gone to the extreme limits of popular sovereignty by giving to every citizen the ballot, to every community the right of local self-government; and to the masses the privilege of electing judicial and military as well as political officers. France was said to be cut up into forty thousand little republics. The central authority was almost null; the local power almost absolute. It was this federative system carried to excess (as under the Articles of the Confederation in our own country) which had made necessary the despotism of the Great Committee. The consular constitution was the reverse of this. Local government became null, the central authority almost absolute. Prefects and sub-prefects, appointed by the executive, directed local affairs, nominally assisted by local boards, which met once a year. Even the mayors held their offices from the central power. From the lowest round of the official ladder to the highest, was a steady climb of one rung above the other. The First Consul was chief, restrained by the constitution; below him, moving at his touch, came all the other officers of state. Under Napoleon the burden of supporting the State rested on the shoulders of the strong. Land, wealth, paid the direct taxes; the customs duties were levied mainly upon luxuries, not upon the necessaries of life. Prior to the Revolution the taxes of the unprivileged had amounted to more than three-fourths of the net produce of land and labor. Under the Napoleonic system the taxes amounted to less than one-fourth of the net income.