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Page 5
Mr. Pitt--Motive of his going out of office--Error of the English
Government--Pretended regard for the Bourbons--Violation of the
treaty of Amiens--Reciprocal accusations--Malta--Lord Whitworth's
departure--Rome and Carthage--Secret satisfaction of Bonaparte--
Message to the Senate, the Legislative Body, and the Tribunate--
The King of England's renunciation of the title of King of France--
Complaints of the English Government--French agents in British ports
--Views of France upon Turkey--Observation made by Bonaparte to the
Legislative Body--Its false interpretation--Conquest of Hanover--
The Duke of Cambridge caricatured--The King of England and the
Elector of Hanover--First address to the clergy--Use of the word
"Monsieur"--The Republican weeks and months.
One of the circumstances which foretold the brief duration of the peace
of Amiens was, that Mr. Pitt was out of office at the time of its
conclusion. I mentioned this to Bonaparte, and I immediately perceived
by his hasty "What do you say?" that my observation had been heard--but
not liked. It did not, however, require any extraordinary shrewdness to
see the true motive of Mr. Pitt's retirement. That distinguished
statesman conceived that a truce under the name of a peace was
indispensable for England; but, intending to resume the war with France
more fiercely than ever, he for a while retired from office, and left to
others the task of arranging the peace; but his intention was to mark his
return to the ministry by the renewal of the implacable hatred he had
vowed against France. Still, I have always thought that the conclusion
of peace, however necessary to England, was an error of the Cabinet of
London. England alone had never before acknowledged any of the
governments which had risen up in France since the Revolution; and as the
past could not be blotted out, a future war, however successful to
England, could not take from Bonaparte's Government the immense weight it
had acquired by an interval of peace. Besides, by the mere fact of the
conclusion of the treaty England proved to all Europe that the
restoration of the Bourbons was merely a pretext, and she defaced that
page of her history which might have shown that she was actuated by
nobler and more generous sentiments than mere hatred of France. It is
very certain that the condescension of England in treating with the First
Consul had the effect of rallying round him a great many partisans of the
Bourbons, whose hopes entirely depended on the continuance of war between
Great Britain and France. This opened the eyes of the greater number,
namely, those who could not see below the surface, and were not
previously aware that the demonstrations of friendship so liberally made
to the Bourbons by the European Cabinets, and especially by England, were
merely false pretences, assumed for the purpose of disguising, beneath
the semblance of honourable motives, their wish to injure France, and to
oppose her rapidly increasing power.
When the misunderstanding took place, France and England might have
mutually reproached each other, but justice was apparently on the side of
France. It was evident that England, by refusing to evacuate Malta, was
guilty of a palpable infraction of the treaty of Amiens, while England
could only institute against France what in the French law language is
called a suit or process of tendency. But it must be confessed that this
tendency on the part of France to augment her territory was very evident,
for the Consular decrees made conquests more promptly than the sword.
The union of Piedmont with France had changed the state of Europe. This
union, it is true, was effected previously to the treaty of Amiens; but
it was not so with the states of Parma and Piacenza, Bonaparte having by
his sole authority constituted himself the heir of the Grand Duke,
recently deceased. It may therefore be easily imagined how great was
England's uneasiness at the internal prosperity of France and the
insatiable ambition of her ruler; but it is no less certain that, with
respect to Malta, England acted with decidedly bad faith; and this bad
faith appeared in its worst light from the following circumstance:--
It had been stipulated that England should withdraw her troops from Malta
three months after the signing of the treaty, yet more than a year had
elapsed, and the troops were still there. The order of Malta was to be
restored as it formerly was; that is to say, it was to be a sovereign and
independent order, under the protection of the Holy See. The three
Cabinets of Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg were to guarantee the
execution of the treaty of Amiens. The English Ambassador, to excuse the
evasions of his Government, pretended that the Russian Cabinet concurred
with England in the delayed fulfilment of the conditions of the treaty;
but at the very moment he was making that excuse a courier arrived from
the Cabinet of St. Petersburg bearing despatches completely, at variance
with the assertion of Lord Whitworth. His lordship left Paris on the
night of the 12th May 1803, and the English Government, unsolicited, sent
passports to the French embassy in London. The news of this sudden
rupture made the English console fall four per cent., but did not
immediately produce such a retrograde effect on the French funds, which
were then quoted at fifty-five francs;--a very high point, when it is
recollected that they were at seven or eight francs on the eve of the
18th Brumaire.
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