proud of this ; he makes it the index and measure of "political
superiority," and "delights in calling to mind one of his uncles who,
in his infancy, prognosticated to him that he would govern the world
because he was fond of lying."[28]

Remark this observation of the uncles - it sums up the experiences of
a man of his time and of his country; it is what social life in
Corsica inculcated; morals and manners there adapted themselves to
each other through an unfailing connection. The moral law, indeed, is
such because similar customs prevail in all countries and at all times
where the police is powerless, where justice cannot be obtained, where
public interests are in the hands of whoever can lay hold of them,
where private warfare is pitiless and not repressed, where every man
goes armed, where every sort of weapon is fair, and where
dissimulation, fraud, and trickery, as well as gun or poniard, are
allowed, which was the case in Corsica in the eighteenth century, as
in Italy in the fifteenth century. - Hence the early impressions of
Bonaparte similar to those of the Borgias and of Macchiavelli; hence,
in his case, that first stratum of half-thought which, later on,
serves as the basis of complete thought; hence, the whole foundation
of his future mental edifice and of the conceptions he subsequently
entertains of human society. Afterwards, on leaving the French
schools and every time he returns to them and spends any time in them,
the same impressions, often renewed, intensify in his mind the same
final conclusion. In this country, report the French
commissioners,[29] "the people have no idea of principle in the
abstract," nor of social interest or justice. "Justice does not
exist; one hundred and thirty assassinations have occurred in ten
years. . . . The institution of juries has deprived the country of all
the means for punishing crime; never do the strongest proofs, the