Fundamental Defaults of his System.
Inward principle of his outward deportment .-- He subordinates the State to him instead of subordinating himself to the State .-- Effect of this .-- His work merely a life-interest.
-- It is ephemeral .-- Injurious .-- The number of lives it cost.
-- The mutilation of France .-- Vice of construction in his European edifice .-- Analogous vice in his French edifice.
Other heads of states have similarly passed their lives in doing violence to mankind; but it was for something that was likely to last, and for a national interest.

What they deemed the public good was not a phantom of the brain, a chimerical poem due to a caprice of the imagination, to personal passions, to their own peculiar ambition and pride.

Outside of themselves and the coinage of their brain a real and substantial object of prime importance existed, namely, the State, the great body of society, the vast organism which lasts indefinitely through the long series of interlinked and responsible generations.

If they drew blood from the passing generation it was for the benefit of coming generations, to preserve them from civil war or from foreign domination.[12125] They have acted generally like able surgeons, if not through virtue, at least through dynastic sentiment and family traditions; having practiced from father to son, they had acquired the professional conscience; their first and only aim was the safety and health of their patient.

It is for this reason that they have not recklessly undertaken extravagant, bloody, and over-risky operations; rarely have they given way to temptation through a desire to display their skill, through the need of dazzling and astonishing the world, through the novelty, keenness, and success of their saws and scalpels.
They felt that a longer and superior existence to their own was imposed upon them; they looked beyond them-selves as far as their sight would reach, and so took measures that the State after them might do without them, live on intact, remain independent, vigorous, and respected athwart the vicissitudes of European conflict and the uncertain problems of coming history.