Now, at the beginning of the Consulate, this murderous law is still in force; summary proceedings are always applicable,[3114] and one hundred and forty-six thousand names still appear on the mortuary list.

This constitutes a loss to France of 146,000 Frenchmen, and not those of the least importance--gentlemen, army and navy officers, members of parliaments, priests, prominent men of all classes, conscientious Catholics, liberals of 1789, Feuillantists of the Legislative assembly, and Constitutionalists of the years III and V.Worse still, through their poverty or hostility abroad, they are a discredit or even a danger for France, as formerly with the Protestants driven out of the country by Louis XIV.[3115]--To these 146,000 exiled Frenchmen add 200,000 or 300,000 others, residents, but semi-proscribed:[3116] First, those nearly related and allied to each emigre, excluded by the law from "every legislative, administrative, municipal and judicial function," and even deprived of the elective vote.

Next, all former nobles or ennobled, deprived by the law of their status as Frenchmen and obliged to re-naturalize themselves according to the formalities.
It is, accordingly, almost the entire elite of old France which is wanting in the new France, like a limb violently wrenched and half-detached by the unskillful and brutal scalpel of the revolutionary "sawbones"; for both the organ and the body are not only living, but they are still feverish and extremely sensitive; it is important to avoid too great irritation; inflammation of any kind would be dangerous.
A skilful surgeon, therefore, must mark the places for the stitches, not force the junctures, but anticipate and prepare for the final healing process, and await the gradual and slow results of vital effort and spontaneous renewal.

Above all he must not alarm the patient.

The First Consul is far from doing this; on the contrary his expressions are all encouraging.