Another time he put the same question to a tribune, who, from the
desire of pleasing him, answered: "Well, general, if our enemies
take measures against us, we are in the right to do the same against
them;" not perceiving that this was tantamount to a confession that
the deed was atrocious. The first consul affected to consider this
act as dictated by reasons of state. One day, about this period, in
a discussion with an intelligent man about the plays of Corneille,
he said, "You see that the public safety, or to express it better,
that state necessity, has with the moderns been substituted in the
place of the fatality of the ancients: there is, for instance, such
a man, who naturally would be incapable of a crime, but political
circumstances impose it upon him as a law. Corneille is the only one
who has shewn, in his tragedies, an acquaintance with state
necessity; on that account, if he had lived in my time, I would have
made him my prime minister." All this appearance of good humour in
the discussion was intended to prove that there was nothing of
passion in the death of the Duke d'Enghien, and that circumstances,
meaning such as the head of the state is exclusively the judge of,
might cause and justify every thing. That there was nothing of
passion in his resolution about the Duke d'Enghien, is perfectly
true; people would have it that rage inspired the crime,--it had
nothing to do with it.
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