Note 643 — Chapter XXIII

Montgaillard, tom. v., pp. 470, 476; Jomini, tom. xv., p. 17. "For six weeks," says Fouché, "the ministry was busily engaged in collecting and transcribing the registers in which the suffrages for the consulship for life were inscribed. Got up by a special committee, the report presented 3,568,185 votes in the affirmative, and only 9074 in the negative. On the 2d August, a senatus consultum, called organic, conferred the perpetual power on the First Consul Buonaparte; and on the 15th, the anniversary of his birth, solemn prayers were offered up to God for having, in his ineffable bounty, granted to France a man who had deigned to consent to bear the burden of supreme power for his whole life."—Tom. i., p. 236.