Note 515 — Chapter XLVIII

"Sir Walter confounds the object of the Revolution with its horrors. Napoleon may well have said uncontradicted, 'that from him would date the era of representative governments'—that is to say, of monarchical governments, but founded upon the laws. He might have added, without contradiction or exaggeration, that he had put an end to the atrocities of the Revolution and to popular fury, the renewal of which he prevented. Impartial posterity will, perhaps, reproach my brother with not having kept an even way between the weakness of Louis XVI. and an inflexible firmness: it will reproach him with not having confided the preservation of the rights and the newly-obtained advantages of the nation to fundamental and stable laws, instead of making them rest on his own existence: but I am greatly deceived if it will confirm the predictions of Sir Walter. I believe that it will divide the good and the advantages of the French Revolution from its excesses and horrors, the end and suppression of which it will attribute to Napoleon."—Louis Buonaparte, p. 58.