This might not have been so completely true if the French finances had been desperate; but they were not--that is, the Emperor's personal finances were not. After the legislative assembly met in December, 1809, it was soon clear to France that the farce of constitutional government under the Empire was nearly played out. Not only were the members of the senate, who should have retired according to the constitution, kept in their seats by a decree of the body to which they belonged, but an imperial edict appointed the deputies for the new departments without even the form of an election. Fontanes retired from the presidency of the senate to become grand master of the university; the grand chamberlain of the palace was appointed in his stead. The Emperor had already sold to private corporations the canals which belonged to the state; the legislature ratified the illegal act. The penal code was now ready. It contained the iniquitous and dangerous penalty of confiscation for certain crimes, thus punishing the children for the faults of their sires, and opening a most tempting avenue to the courts for indulgence in venality under legal forms. There was little debate, and the code was adopted in its entirety as presented. The reason for this paralysis of constitutional government is clear. Even the immense war indemnities taken from conquered states did not suffice for the maintenance of the enormous armies which covered Europe like swarms of locusts. The marshals and generals were insatiate, and the greed of the civil administrators was scarcely less. From the top to the bottom of the public service every official stood with open hand and hungry eyes. This state of things was directly due to Napoleon's policy of attaching everybody to himself by personal ties, and in giving he had the lavish hand of a parvenu. The recipients were never content, hoarding their fees, and becoming opulent, pursuing all the time each his personal ambitions, and ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees, English merchants and the Italian clergy, had all been wrung dry; timorous statesmen, crafty churchmen and sly contractors, unprincipled financiers and ambitious politicians, not one was forgotten or overlooked in the accumulation of hoards which, having long been called the army chest, were now erected into the dignity of an "extraordinary domain."