immediately follows a peace. The conduct of France was felt to be the more unreasonable and ungracious, as all restrictions on her commerce, imposed during the war, had been withdrawn on the part of Great Britain, so soon as the peace was concluded In like manner, a stipulation of the treaty of Amiens, providing that all sequestrations imposed on the property of French or of English, in the two contending countries, should be removed, was instantly complied with in Britain, but postponed and dallied with on the part of France.

The above were vexatious and offensive measures, intimating little respect for the Government of England, and no desire to cultivate her good will. They were perhaps adopted by the Chief Consul, in hopes of inducing Britain to make some sacrifices in order to obtain from his favour a commercial treaty, the advantages of which, according to his opinion of the English nation, was a boon calculated to make them quickly forgive the humiliating restrictions from which it would emancipate their trade. If this were any part of his policy, he was ignorant of the nature of the people to whom it was applied. It is the sluggish ox alone that is governed by a goad. But what gave the deepest offence and most lively alarm to Britain, was, that while Buonaparte declined affording the ordinary facilities for English commerce, it was his purpose, nevertheless, to establish a commercial agent in every part of the British dominions, whose ostensible duty was to watch over that very trade which the First Consul showed so little desire to encourage, but whose real business resembled that of an accredited and privileged spy. These official persons were not only, by their instructions, directed to collect every possible information on commercial points, but also to furnish a plan of the ports of each district, with all the soundings, and to point out with what wind vessels could go out and enter with most ease, and at what draught of water the harbour might be entered by ships of burden. To add to the alarming character of such a set of agents, it was found that those invested with the office were military men and engineers.

Consuls thus nominated had reached Britain, but had not, in general, occupied the posts assigned to them, when the British Government, becoming informed of the duties they were expected to perform, announced to them, that any one who might repair to a British seaport under such a character, should be instantly ordered to quit the island. The secrecy with which these agents had been instructed to conduct themselves was so great, that one Fauvelet, to whom the office of commercial agent at Dublin had been assigned, and who had reached the place of his destination before the nature of the appointment was discovered, could not be found out by some persons who desired to make an affidavit before him as consul of France. It can be no wonder that the very worst impression was made on the public mind of Britain respecting the further projects of her late enemies, when it was evident that they availed themselves of the first moments of returning peace to procure, by an indirect and most suspicious course of proceeding, that species of information, which would be most useful to France, and most dangerous to Britain, in the event of a renewed war.

While these grievances and circumstances of suspicion agitated the English nation, the daily press, which alternately acts upon public opinion, and is reacted upon by it, was loud and vehement. The personal character of the Chief Consul was severely treated; his measures of self-aggrandizement arraigned, his aggressions on the liberty of Franee, of Italy, and especially of Switzerland, held up to open day; while every instance of petty vexation and oppression practised upon British commerce or British subjects, was quoted as expressing his deep resentment against the only country which possessed the will and the power to counteract his acquiring the universal dominion of Europe.

There was at this period in Britain a large party of French Royalists, who, declining to return to France, or falling under the exceptions to the amnesty, regarded Buonaparte as their personal enemy, as well as the main obstacle to the restoration of the Bourbons, to which, but for him only, the people of France seemed otherwise more disposed than at any time since the commencement of the Revolution. These gentlemen found an able and active advocate of their cause in Monsieur Peltier, an emigrant, a determined royalist, and a man of that ready wit and vivacity of talent which is peculiarly calculated for periodical writing. He had opposed the democrats during the early days of the Revolution, by a publication termed the "Acts

of the Apostles;"1 in which he held up to ridicule and execration the actions, pretensions, and principles of their leaders, with such success as induced Brissot to assert, that he had done more harm to the Republican cause than all the allied armies. At the present crisis, he commenced the publication of a weekly paper in London, in the French language, called L'Ambigu. The decoration at the top of the sheet was a head of Buonaparte, placed on the body of a Sphinx. This ornament being objected to after the first two or three numbers, the Sphinx appeared with the neck truncated; but, being still decked with the consular emblems, continued to intimate emblematically the allusion at once to Egypt, and to the ambiguous character of the First Consul. The columns of this paper were dedicated to the most severe attacks upon Buonaparte and the French Government; and as it was highly popular, from the general feelings of the English nation towards both, it was widely dispersed and generally read.

The torrent of satire and abuse poured forth from the English and Anglo-gallican periodical press, was calculated deeply to annoy and irritate the person against whom it was chiefly aimed. In England we are so much accustomed to see characters the most unimpeachable, nay, the most venerable, assailed by the daily press, that we account the

[The "Actes des Apôtres," which appeared in 1790, and in the editing of which Peltier was assisted by Riverol, Champcenetz, and the Viscount Mirabeau, was principally directed against the measures of the Constituent Assembly ]

individual guilty of folly, who, if he be innocent of giving cause for the scandal, takes it to heart more than a passenger would mind the barking of a dog, that yelps at every passing sound. But this is a sentiment acquired partly by habit, partly by our knowledge, that unsubstantiated scandal of this sort makes no impression on the public mind. Such indifference cannot be expected on the part of foreigners, who, in this particular, resemble horses introduced from neighbouring counties into the precincts of forest districts, where they are liable to be stung into madness by a peculiar species of gadfly, to which the race bred in the country are from habit almost totally indifferent.

If it be thus with foreigners in general, it must be supposed that from natural impatience of censure, as well as rendered susceptible and irritable by his course of uninterrupted success, Napoleon Buonaparte must have winced under the animated and sustained attacks upon his person and government, which appeared in the English newspapers, and Peltier's Ambigu. He attached at all times, as we have already had occasion to remark, much importance to the influence of the press, which in Paris he had taken under his own especial superintendence, and for which he himself often condescended to compose or correct paragraphs. To be assailed, therefore, by the whole body of British newspapers, almost as numerous as their navy, seems to have provoked him to the extremity of his patience; and resentment of these attacks aggravated the same hostile sentiments against England, which, from causes of suspicion already