in their hands; they therefore, without hesitation, exposed their whole ficet in the expedition to St. Domingo, while at the congress of Amiens they contested every point, and seemed only desirous of ascertaining how many impositions, aggressions, and acts of insolence the British government would bear, before they would finally break off the negotiations. The government of France ran no risk, for as all their additional demands were most exorbitant and unjust, they had nothing to do but to recede a little when they found British patience could bear no more. In this manner, the agreement with respect to Portugal was compromised. By the preliminaries, the integrity of the Portugueze territories was to be preserved, and for this article we paid an exorbitant price in colonial cessions. But hardly were those preliminaries signed, when the French government produced an underhand treaty which they had negotiated with Portugal separately, by which they were to be paid a second time for what they had ceded, and, as if that were not enough, they were also to receive the Portugueze Guiana. This breach of good faith was not only a robbery on Portugal, but a direct insult to this country; it was felt as such by the people, and the French government were obliged to recede so far as to compromise the affair in the following manner: England was not to insist on the absolute integrity of the doninions of the queen of Portugal, nor was France to take all Guiana at present; instead of the river Amazons, the Arowari, which comes within fifty miles of it, was to be the

gular order of narration) this circunstance, which formed a prominent feature in the negotiations at Amiens, should be postponed until the whole result of the congress was stated, yet this single point may be sufficient to illustrate the spirit which animated both the contracting parties at the time of the opening the congress. France, from the moment the preliminaries were signed, considered herself as secure of peace; she ventured immediately her fleets upon the ocean, and produced those treaties which had been for a long time most carefully concealed. She either, with justice, relied on the good faith and sincerity of Great Britain, or else she supposed that it must have been fear, or a failure of resources, or the determination of the British ministers to sacrifice all for peace, which could alone have induced the administration of this country to accede to them. It is probable that the latter opinion was that of the French government, for from the signing of the preliminaries they acted without the least reserve, as if indeed we had been a conquered nation, and that there was no power existing which could check its encroachinents. The English government, on the other hand, sincere in the desire of peace, and overrating the power of the enemy as much as she herself was underrated by him, was ready to ac cede to any terms, even such as could hardly consist with her secu-. rity or her honour, and was more inclined to submit to a few impositions than to break off the treaty altogether. Such were the mutual dispositions of the high contracting parties at the congress of Amiens.

In the mean time Bonaparté was solicitous to procure the formal consent of all the great powers of Europe to the step he had taken in Italy. He lost no tine in announcing the result of the consulta at Lyons. To the king of Prussia, who was entirely in the French interest, (as hoping, by Bonaparte's alliance, that under the name of indemnities he should be enabled to seize upon the best parts of Germany,) directed his ambassador at Paris to convey his most cordial congratulations on the subject, while Austria, in more qualified language, expressed that she felt a most lively interest in the event; the term was somewhat ambiguous, and there can be little doubt but that Austria must have felt deeply affected at such an accession of power to so formidable a rival, and so palpable a violation of the treaty of Luneville; for as by that treaty the Cisalpine republic was declared independent, the emperor of Germany had himself as much right to take the sovereignty of the country as Bonaparte. Right, however, among nations, has always yielded, and must ever yield, to superior force. The emperor was in no condition to support his guarantee of the independence of the Cisalpine republic, and therefore he was obliged to submit. Russia received this communication without any apparent satisfaction or displeasure, and England alone could not or would not interfere to alter the arrangements on the continent.

The ambition of Bonaparté was by no means satisfied with his Italian honours; he now openly assumed the most arbitrary and absolute power in France, which

country, as well as Italy, he from henceforward secured to consider as his patrimonial property. His return from Lyons was announced at Paris by repeated discharges of artillery (a compliment which none of the ancient monarchs of France ever required), and from the moment of his return he affected a greater degree of state and ceremony, and kept his generals, who were formerly his intimate companions, at a most respectful distance.

By whatever title he intended to govern France, he resolved to govern it absolutely, and settle the government in his family as a new dynasty. He not only took upon himself the state of a sovereign, but exercised a power more arbitrary than ever had been exercised by the former kings of France. Laharpe, a distinguished veteran of French literature, and who had the highest name and reputation as an author, at the age of seventy, offended his consular majesty, by expressing himself freely of the government before a company of old ladies; he was immediately banished from Paris. Madame Damas, and some other females of those coteries, were also banished. Doval, the author of a piece called ward in Scotland," (winch, from some supposed similitude or ween the fortunes of the houses of Stuart and Bourbon, was most favourably received by the royalists,) was also banished, and it was expected he would be sent to Guiana: but he was, at length, at the earnest entreaties of mademoiselle Beauharnois (the daughter of madame Bonaparte), permitted to return. Nothing could more strongly show how completely the personal lib.rty of every indi

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vidual

by any law, than those instances. If such sentences of banishment were completely arbitrary, the pardons which followed were equally so. The caprice of the moment, and the effect of female solicitation, at length restored those authors to their families, but the circumstance proved, that not a vestige of civil liberty remained in France. Not only individuals, but the public Bodies, which he had himself constituted, felt the effects of his displeasure, when they ventured to offend him. It was not to be expected that general Bonaparté, who, with the bayonets of his grenadiers, destroyed the former constitution of France, and turned out the representatives chosen by the nation, would suffer any serious opposition from persons named by himself. Notwithstanding the improbability of success, a number of men of great talents, both in the tribunat, and in the legislative council, plainly expressed their wishes for the establishment of civil liberty and law in France: they talked of the restoration of the freedom of the press, as a thing absolutely necessary, and had even the courage to reject a civil code presented by Bonaparté, which was full of absurdity and tyrannical enactments. The rejection of this code violently enraged Bonaparté; he testified his displeasure by observations which were not even bounded by the common rules of decorum, and soon found means to show those bodies that they must, for the future, be more subordinate to his will, than ever the parliament of Paris, or the provincial parliaments, were to the venerable pristine sovereigns of France.

made for the regulation of the French government, one fifth of those bodies were to go out annually by ballot, and he took care so to manage it, that every man of talents, in either of the assemblies, who appeared averse from his projects, should be removed from the councils. Among those who were removed this year, was Chenier, one of the most distinguished of the jacobin party, the celebrated author of the Marseillois Hymn, and most of the patriotic songs which came out during the revolution, and contributed a great deal towards it. Bailleul, one of the most able politicians in France, Daunou, author of the constitution, Barthelemy, and Benjamin Constant, were also removed. Benjamin Constant was a young man, possessed of the most commanding eloquence. He, always, in the tribunat professed to be unwilling, during the war, to check or thwart the measures of government. He always spoke of his country as being then, as it were, in a state of siege, and that, therefore, a temporary surrender of its liberties and laws might be made; but whenever he spoke with hope of the return of peace, it was principally on the ground that, when that so much wished for event should take place, the military, as well as the revolutionary system, might for ever cease, and that the empire of rational liberty and the law might be established in their place. Such sentiments, boldly avowed by a legislator of the most consummate talents, gave hopes of better times to the true republicans in France; but to Bonaparte's government they were exceeding dangerous; usurped

and

and despotic power could never stand the test of cool and free discussion, in times of peace. Bonaparté was well aware of this, and therefore, in every constitution he ever made for any country, he laid it down as the first principle, that the legislative, or mock representative body, must never originate any thing, must never discuss any point but what the government should send to them for discussion, or rather for their acceptance. Besides this precaution, he showed them, in the present instance, that he had reserved to himself power at any time to check the ebullitions of public spirit in any of those assemblies. Whoever ventured to displease him might be certain of being displaced at the end of the year, and of never again resuming his seat.

This was a stretch of absolute dominion, more absolute, perhaps, than had ever been assumed by any executive power over its senate. The senators of Rome, and the members of the parliament of Paris, had their seats for life, and therefore could and often did display some spirit of independence; but by the French constitution, as it now stands, the political existence of a senator ceases, from the time he has displeased the government. After those expulsions, the first consul had an easy and complying senate, who were ready to accept his civil code, or any other code he should present them, his legion of honour, or any project that came into his head, however absurd or unjust. The public bodies dared no longer express a sentiment of freedom, and if any individual ventured either to converse or write with freedom, the examples of La

harpe, and of the author of " Edward in Scotland," held out sufficient terrors. An imprudent word might send the father of a family to Guiana, and it could not reasonably be expected that mademoiselle Beauharnois would always undertake to solicit pardon for those who offended the first consul.

Bonaparté having thus triumphantly terminated the bloodless conquest of the fairest portion of Italy; having, without the slightest idea that it would give the British ministry any uneasiness, announced to the world the secret treaty of March 1801, concluded with Spain, by which Louisiana, the dominions of the duke of Parma, and the important station in the Mediterranean, the island of Elba, were irrevocably united as component parts of his empire; the clandestine treaties with Portugal and with the Porte; having sent the largest armament which ever sailed for the new world, to secure the old dominion of France, and to take possession of its new acquisitions, even before he had concluded peace with Great Britain; it might be supposed that such uncontrolled, unquestioned, and complete display of power and policy would have checked the restless activity of his mind, and that he now would relax in inactivity and pleasures, after the unceasing toils of so many years: but those who so calculated, soon saw, to their surprise, that the lust of empire was in him an appetite not to be satiated; fresh encroachments upon what remained independent in Europe, and fresh attempts still more to aggrandize the country who had adopted him, marked, unceasingly, his subsequent measures.

On the 6th of February, letters

of

of a most menacing nature were sent, by orders of the first consul, to the canton of Berne, in which the immediate interference of France was threatened, under the pretence of the dissensions prevailing among the Swiss themselves; but in the Valais more immediate and unequivocal proceedings on the part of France transpired.

In February general Thureau, celebrated for his atrocious massacres in La Vendee, arrived early in that month in the Valais; set aside all the constituted authorities throughout that little state and its dependencies, possessed himself of the public treasury, the archives of the government, and the post office, and publicly announced it as the intention of France to incorporate that republic with her dominions, The Pays de Vaud, which lies between France and the Valais, was already formally annexed to her dominions; and Switzerland began to tremble at what she apprehended must be the consequence of these encroachments: either the directly becoming a French province, or the imposition of a constitution which would virtually cause her to become one.

Nor were the efforts of the first consul less active with regard to internal arrangements; chambers of commerce and agriculture were established throughout his empire; societies for the encouragement of the arts and manufactures universally established; rewards for eminency in every branch of the fine arts lavishly promised, whilst the arranging the plunder of Italy in the utmost splendour at Paris, promised to secure to that capital The resort and influx of strangers,

which once crowded to Rome and the other ravaged cities of Italy. Were such alone the efforts made by France to restore her trade and her finances, the means would have been as laudable and legitimate as the ends: but the first consul did not limit thus his exertions ; he manifested, both directly and through his influence with Spain, with Holland, with Genoa, and the other subjugated powers, the most marked hostilities against the commerce of the British empire. Our intercourse with Piedmont was completely cut off, which always had been so beneficial a source of advantage to many branches of our manufacture. Our trade with Genoa, with Tuscany, with Spain, was expressly interdicted under the severest prohibitions. In the north of Europe our situation was nearly as alarming; British goods were excluded all transit through the states of Holland under the severest penalties, and it was much to be apprehended that our future connection with Germany would in a great measure depend upon the will and pleasure of a rival, who in such a moment as the present, so far from conciliating, did not even think it necessary to conceal his rooted enmity.

About this period also was dispatched, under the admiral Gantheaume, a strong squadron of French men of war from the Mediterranean, to reinforce the armament which sailed for St. Domingo, in the month of December 1801, under admiral Villaret Joyeuse and general Le Clerc, and from whence news was now eagerly expected.

On the first of March citizen Bacher laid before the diet at

Ratisbon