Five millions of electors, constituted into primary assemblies, were to prepare a _municipal_ list of 500,000 elected who in their turn were entrusted with the formation of a _departmental_ list of 50,000 names. To these twice sifted delegates was confided the care of electing 5000 as a _national_ list, alone capable of becoming the agents of executive power in the whole of France. The municipal and departmental administrations were to be chosen by authority from their respective lists. The _Conservative Senate_, composed of eighty members, self-elective, had the right of appointing the members of the Corps Législatif, the Tribuneship, and the Court of Cassation. It was besides destined to the honor of choosing the Great Elector. The senators, richly endowed, might exercise no other function. The Corps Législatif was dumb, and limited to voting the laws prepared by the Council of State, and discussed by the Tribunate. The Great Elector, without actively interfering in the government, furnished with a civil list of six millions, and magnificently housed by the state, appointed the two councils of peace and war, upon whom depended the ministers and all the administrative _personnel_ of prefects and sub- prefects entrusted with the government of the departments. In case the magistrate, so highly placed in his sumptuous indolence, should seem to menace the safety of the State, the Senate was authorized to _absorb_ him by admitting him into its ranks. The same action might be exercised with respect to any of the civil or military functionaries. So many complicated wheels calculated to hinder rather than to sustain each other, so much pomp in words and so little efficacy in action, could never suit the intentions or the character of General Bonaparte. He claimed at once the position of Great Elector, which Sieyès had perhaps secretly thought to reserve for himself. "What!" said he, "would you want to make me a pig in a dunghill?" Then demolishing the edifice laboriously constructed by the legislator, "Your Great Elector is a slothful king," said he to Sieyès; "the time for that sort of thing is past. What! appoint people to act, and not act himself! It won't do. If I were this Great Elector I should certainly do everything which you would desire me not to do. I should say to the two consuls of peace and war: 'If you don't choose such and such a man, or take such and such a measure, I shall send you about your business.' And I would compel them to proceed according to my will. And these two consuls? How do you think they could agree? Unity of action is indispensable in government. Do you think that serious men would be able to lend themselves to such shams?"