This
is legal, but the nation has not parted with its sovereignty or
bound itself by contract forever to a Napoleonic dynasty.
Napoleon holds the imperial power "by the grace of God and the
will of the nation," which means simply that he holds his
authority from God, through the French people, and is bound to
exercise it according to the law of God and the national will.
The nation is as competent to revoke this constitution as the
legislature is to repeal any law it is competent to enact, and in
doing so breaks no contract, violates no right, for Napoleon and
his descendants hold their right to the imperial throne subject
to the national will from which it is derived. In case the
nation should revoke the powers delegated, he or they would have
no more valid claim to the throne than have the Bourbons, whom
the nation has unmistakably dismissed from its service.
The only point here to be observed is, that the change must be by
the nation itself, in its sovereign capacity; not by a mob, nor
by a part of the nation conspiring, intriguing, or rebelling,
without any commission from the nation. The first Napoleon
governed by a legal title, but he was never legally dethroned,
and the government of the Bourbons, whether of the elder branch
or the younger, was never a legal government, for the Bourbons
had lost their original rights by the election of the first
Napoleon, and never afterwards had the national will in their
favor.
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