But even so the constitution was not sufficiently guarded against Jacobins or royalists.

If by any chance a dangerous proposal were forced through these mutually distrustful bodies, the Senate was charged with the task of vetoing it, and if the Grand Elector, or any other high official, strove to gain a perpetual dictatorship, the Senate was at once to _absorb_ him into its ranks.
Moreover, lest the voters should send up too large a proportion of Jacobins or royalists, the first selection of members of the great Councils and the chief functionaries for local affairs was to be made by the Consuls, who thus primarily exercised not only the "power from above," but also the "confidence" which ought to have come from below.
Perhaps this device was necessary to set in motion Sieyes' system of wheels within wheels; for the Senate, which was to elect the Grand Elector, by whom the executive officers were indirectly to be chosen, was in part self-sufficient: the Consuls named the first members, who then co-opted, that is, chose the new members.

Some impulse from without was also needed to give the constitution life; and this impulse was now to come.

Where Sieyes had only contrived wheels, checks, regulator, break, and safety-valve, there now rushed in an imperious will which not only simplified the parts but supplied an irresistible motive power.
The complexity of much of the mechanism, especially that relating to popular election and the legislature, entirely suited Bonaparte.

But, while approving the triple winnowing, to which Sieyes subjected the results of manhood suffrage, and the subordination of the legislative to the executive authority,[132] the general expressed his entire disapproval of the limitations of the Grand Elector's powers.