Until 1812 the responsibility for inordinate bloodshed is all his own. It is needless to dwell upon the period of the Empire in order to study Napoleon's character. It shines forth effulgent, but noxious. He remained personally what he had always been--imperious, laborious, unprincipled; but, on the other hand, kindly, generous, sensitive to the popular movements. His thirst for power became predominant; his lavish contempt for men and money displayed the recklessness of a desperate parvenu; his passion for war burst all its bounds. Personal ambition eclipsed principle, expediency, shrewdness--in short, every quality which makes for self-preservation. The reason was not conscious despair, but unconscious desperation. Politically he had fought and won an easy but a decisive battle. Imperialism was firmly seated. The behavior of the French people was natural enough, but they lent themselves to his purposes with complete surrender. In this the world learned a lesson which should never be forgotten: that democracy is an excellent workhorse, but a poor charger; a good hack, but an untrustworthy racer. The interest of the plain man is in his daily life, his family, his business, his advancement. He cannot be an expert in foreign or domestic politics, in public law, or in warfare; expertness requires the exclusive devotion of a lifetime. Make the common person a theorist, and he is an ardent democrat, but a poor administrator. Hence the necessity in transition epochs for a wise constitution. It was not difficult to convince the French burgher that, all other forms of democratic administration having had a chance and having failed in times of war, the only one so far untried--that of delegating power to a single superior man--should have a fair trial, the more as the excellent man was at hand. Even in times of peace the hard-worked citizen either neglects his political duties altogether, or, performing them in a thoughtless routine, longs for some one he can trust to do his thinking and acting: in war, as far as we have had the opportunity to observe in ancient and modern times, his imperialism is avowed, and he demands a dictator. We have no reason to suppose that there is any democracy which could outlast twenty years of a herculean struggle for national life or death, and such the Franco-English wars which introduced the last century seemed to the Frenchman of that time to be.