76 CARNOT. 
given an incontestable superiority to our arms, when the 
independence of the country was again assured, Carnot 
resigned his appointment. He would not consent to 
appear an accomplice in the changes that were prepar- 
ing in the form of the government. Accordingly, on 
the 16th Vendémiaire, year IX., he wrote as follows: 
“Citizen Consuls, I again send you my resignation; I 
beg you will not defer accepting it.” 
It is not from a trifling cause that people part thus 
laconically. The letter I have just given was a corollary 
of the earnest disputes that were daily occurring between 
the Republic and the Empire, in the persons of the First 
Consul and the Minister of War. 
Recalled to public affairs as a Tribune in 1802, Car- 
not opposed the creation of the Legion of Honour. He 
thinks—I was going to say, he foresees—that a distine- 
tion bestowed without inquiry by the uncontrolled will of 
one man, will end, notwithstanding its imposing title, and 
according to the natural course of things in this world, 
by no longer being any more than the means of attaching 
followers, and reducing to silence a swarm of little vani- 
ties. Carnot also with all his might opposed the creation 
of a Consulate for life; but it was especially at the 
moment when it was proposed to raise Bonaparte to the 
Imperial Throne, that he redoubled his energy and 
ardour. History has already recorded his noble words ; 
she will also say, that surrounded by old Jacobins, sur- 
rounded even by those same men who, on the 18th 
Fructidor, had persecuted him as a royalist, Carnot re- 
mained standing nearly alone in the midst of the general 
apostasy, as if at least to prove to the world that politi- 
cal conscience is not quite an empty word. 
The Tribunate was soon suppressed. Carnot retired 
