"Unhappily, the republicans consulted their passions rather than their reason. The king would not have been a despot if he could, and could not have been a despot if he would. Napoleon, raised to the throne of France, would have both the inclination and the means. But Louis was the representative of the emigration, and Napoleon of the revolution. The men of the revolution, with a levity inexcusable in persons conversant with public affairs, preferred a vigorous, crafty, and remorseless tyrant, with a tri-coloured cockade, to a prince whose disposition was liberal, and whose government, though by no means faultless, was the best that they had ever known, but who wore a blue riband, and claimed the throne by a hereditary title."