In Italy, the first thing he did, after overturning the temporal power of the Pope, was to suppress the papal monopolies by which the Albani family had the sole right to manufacture pins, Andrea Novelli the exclusive privilege of selling oil for lamps, Alexandro Betti the monopoly of ferry boats, and so forth. To these benighted Romans he gave the Code Napoléon, trial by jury, home rule in local affairs, equality before the law, and relief from all feudal abuses. The first thing the Pope did when in 1814 he was restored to temporal power was to abolish all things Napoleonic, and to reëstablish the hateful monopolies, feudal burdens, and papal customs. In Egypt he projected the mighty work of adding millions of acres to the cultivable area by the construction of vast storage basins on the Nile. England has but recently carried to successful completion the magnificent plan he suggested. In Milan he finished the gorgeous cathedral which had been commenced hundreds of years before. To stagnant, pestilential Venice he gave new life, dredging her lagoons, decreeing a Grand Canal, deepening her harbor, overhauling her sanitary system--spending $1,000,000 during his one visit. And the story is the same for almost every portion of his huge empire. Bad? Lord Wolseley says he was not only bad, but “superlatively” so. Perhaps he was; but here is one publican and sinner who dares to say that were the good men to work half as hard as Napoleon did to improve the condition of _this_ world, its moral and material situation would more nearly approximate the imagined perfection of that heavenly abode in whose behalf _this_ poor planet and its poor humanity are so often neglected. CHAPTER XXXI Tilsit is generally considered the high-water mark of Napoleon’s power. Not yet forty years of age, he was lord of lords and king of kings. With Russia for an ally, Continental Europe was at his mercy. Adding Westphalia and, also, enlarged Saxony to the Confederation of the Rhine, the Empire was guarded upon the west, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, by an unbroken line of feudatory states. In all these subject lands the principles of the French Revolution took the form of law. The Code Napoléon, with its civil equality, jury trials, uniformity of taxes, publicity of legal proceedings, drove out the mediæval abuses which had so long robbed the people in the name of government. To his brother Jerome Napoleon wrote: “Be a constitutional king. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being unknown heretofore to the Germans.” And the Emperor reminded Jerome that if he gave his people the benefits of a wise and liberal administration, they would never wish to return to the barbarous rule of Prussia. Rule your kingdom wisely and liberally, said Napoleon, and “this kind of government will protect it more powerfully than fortresses or the armies of France.”