No doubt Louis XVIII, warned by the catastrophe of
the "Hundred Days," and very unwilling to take the road
of exile again, was fully alive to the dangerous conditions
attending his restoration. He was a prince to whom
increasing age and infirmities forbade further adventure,
epicurean enough to appreciate and enjoy the advantages
of power, and intelligent enough to devise the best means
of maintaining it. For this purpose he found his principal
resource in the highly centralised administrative system
bequeathed to him by the vanquished Napoleon, with which
marvellous instrument of authority, altogether superior to
the organisation of the old Monarchy, he did not dream of
interfering. Nearly all his Ministers had once been intimate
co-workers with the Emperor. The first of these was Prince
Talleyrand, and next Fouché, in Foreign Affairs and Police;
then Baron Louis at Finance, Gouvion St Cyr at the War
Office; and in the Home Department lastly, as Minister of
Justice, Baron Pasquier, who had been Prefect of Police in
1810. By these selections Louis XVIII indicated his wish
to base his executive authority on the men and measures
of the previous dynasty. He retained the departmental
system with its prefects and sub-prefects, to whom the
Communes were administratively subordinate, the judiciary
and its courts and jurisdictions under irremovable judges,
and a very powerful staff of public officers; the old civil
procedure as settled by the Code Napoléon; a secret
criminal procedure, and the transfer of the office of Notary
or Solicitor by purchase. He maintained the executive
authority of the Conseils de Préfecture and of the Council of
State, the educational monopoly of the State as existing in
the Imperial University, and the Legion of Honour; finally
he took over the whole system of direct and indirect taxation,
of excise, of state monopolies, and of local excise-duties,
with all the members of its old staff in their various depart-
ments; also the protective duties enacted for the benefit of

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