[Footnote 2324: "Napoleon Ire et ses lois civiles," by Honoré Pérouse, 280: Words of Napoleon: "I have for a long time given a great deal of thought and calculation to the re-establishment of the social edifice. I am to-day obliged to watch over the maintenance of public liberty. I have no idea of the French people becoming serfs."--"The prefects are wrong in straining their authority."--"The repose and freedom of citizens should not depend on the exaggeration or arbitrariness of a mere administrator."--"Let authority be felt by the people as little as possible and not bear down on them needlessly."--(Letters of January 15, 1806, March 6, 1807, January 12, 1809, to Fouché, and of March 6, 1807, to Regnault.)--Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le Consulat," P. 178 (Words of the first consul before the council of state): "True civil liberty depends on the security of property. In no country can the rate of the tax-payer be changed every year. A man with 3000 francs income does not know how much he will have left to live on the following year; his entire income may be absorbed by the assessment on it... A mere clerk, with a dash of his pen, may overcharge you thousands of francs... Nothing has ever been done in France in behalf of real estate. Whoever has a good law passed on the cadastre (official valuation of all the land in France) will deserve a statue."] [Footnote 2325: Honoré Pérouse, Ibid, 274 (Speech of Napoleon to the council of state on the law on mines):" "Myself, with many armies at my disposition, I could not take possession of any one's field, for the violation of the right of property in one case would be violating it in all. The secret is to have mines become actual property, and hence sacred in fact and by law."--Ibid., 279:" "What is the right of property? It is not only the right of using but, again, of abusing it. ... One must always keep in mind the advantage of owning property. The best protection to the owner of property is the interest of the individual; one may always rely on his activity.... A government makes a great mistake in trying to be too paternal; liberty and property are both ruined by over-solicitude."--"If the government prescribes the way in which property shall be used it no longer exists.".--Ibid., 284 (Letters of Aug.21 and Sept. 7, 1809, on expropriations by public authority): "It is indispensable that the courts should supervise, stop expropriation, receive complaints of and guarantee property-owners against the enterprises of our prefects, our prefecture councils and all other agents.... Expropriation is a judicial proceeding.... I cannot conceive how France can have proprietors if anybody can be deprived of his field simply by an administrative decision."--In relation to the ownership of mines, to the cadastre, to expropriation, and to the portion of property which a man might bequeath, Napoleon was more liberal than his jurists. Madame de Staël, "Dix années d'exil," ch. XVIII.