Excerpt from The History of Napoleon the First, Vol. 4 The labours of this double session of 1809 - 1810 might, however, have done honour to the last days of the Legislative Body, had that body been something more than a mere simple registry of the Imperial will. But long and cruel experience had convinced the Deputies that the slightest symptom of criticism or of reform with regard to the Government projects, even those most unconnected with politics, only resulted in irritating their master, and in causing those matters to be ordered by decrees which ought to have been decided upon by a law. They confined themselves therefore to a dull and unvarying approbation of measures that were contrary to every principle. The Emperor had acted in this manner when, on his private authority, he ordered the canals belonging to the State to be sold, under pretext of applying the produce of such sale to the completion of the new canal works undertaken in various directions. The Legislative Body hesitated to give its approval to such an illegal alienation of so precious a portion of the State property, whereupon Napoleon passed them over by issuing simple decrees (dated May 17 and August 10, and the Legislative Body, obliged to submit, converted a measure into law which it most justly considered a Spoliation of public property. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.