He knows that in this lies his power, his deep-seated popularity, his social utility.
"Nobody," says Napoleon,[3334] "is interested in overthrowing a government in which all the deserving are employed." Then, again, comes his significant exclamation at the end, his summary of modern society, a solemn grandiose figure of speech found in the legendary souvenirs of a glorious antiquity, a classic reminiscence of the noble Olympian games, "Henceforth, all careers are open to talent!" IV.

The Struggle for Office and Title.
Competition and prizes .-- Multitude of offices .-- How their number is increased by the extension of central patronage and of the French territory .-- Situation of a Frenchman abroad .-- It gives him rank .-- Rapidity of promotion.
-- Constant elimination and multiplicity of vacancies in the army .-- Preliminary elimination in the civil service.
-- Proscription of cultivated men and interruption of education during the Revolution .-- General or special instruction rare in 1800 .-- Small number of competent candidates .-- Easy promotion due to the lack of competitors .-- Importance and attraction the prizes offered .-- The Legion of Honor .-- The imperial nobility .-- Dotations and majorities .-- Emulation.
Let us now consider the career which he thus opens to them and the prizes he offers.

These prizes are in full view, ranged along each racecourse, graduated according to distances and more and more striking and magnificent.

Every ambition is provided for, the highest as well as the lowest, and these are countless; for they consist of offices of every grade in the civil and military hierarchies of a great centralized State whose intervention is universal, under a government which systematically tolerates no authority or influence outside of itself and which monopolizes every species of social importance for its own functionaries.[3335]--All these prizes, even the smallest and most insignificant, are awarded by it.

In the first place, Napoleon has two or three times as many offices to bestow, on the soil of old France alone, as the former kings; for, even in the choice of their staff of officials, the latter were not always free; in many places they did not have, or no longer had the right of appointment.