of commerce and general industry; leaving what was farther to be communicated on these heads to his ministers. Mollien, the minister of the French treasury, or exchequer, in the printed budget, as we would say, for 1807, congratulates his emperor on this subject in the fol. lowing terms: "Your majesty, sire, has protected your people from both the scourge and burthen of war. Your armies have added to their harvest of glory one of foreign contributions, which has ensured their support, their clothing, and their pay." This last compliment, indeed, had nothing in it of the exaggeration of flattery. During the whole of the campaign, or rather campaigns, of 1807, in the North, the treasury of Paris was overflowing. A large sum, exclu sive of the foreign or exterior exactions for the maintenance of the troops, the splendid establishments of the generals, and the gratification of private cupidity, was thrown into the list of ways and means, in order to favour an idea that had been publicly insinuated, that foreign tribute would one day exonerate the masters of the world from the burthens they now bore; just as in the history of the Romans, the military at all times, and at one period the whole states of Italy, were exempted from taxation. In the budget of 1807, the whole of the receipts of the treasury for the preceding year, was stated at 986,992,539 livres; but this printed account is generally supposed to be greatly short of what was actually collected: which has been estimated by some at 50, and by others at not less than 55 millions sterling. In the report of the minister of war, of July 1807, the number of

4

Prussian prisoners, taken by the French in the war with Prussia, 1806-7, is estimated at 5,179 officers, and 123,418 privates and subalterns: the number of küled at about 50,000. There is a very natural transition from this exulting report of the minister of war, to that of Visconti, one of the directors of the Imperial Museum of Arts. It records, as the spoil collected in the North by the Protector of the Arts, 350 paintings; 242 rare and precious MSS. many of them oriental; 50 statues; 80 busts; 192 articles of bronze, armour, &c.

At the same time that Buona. parte used every means for flatter. ing French vanity, and feeding the hopes of a sanguine and volatile. people, he was anxious to destroy any remains they possessed of li berty, and to render the form of government purely monarchical. By a senatus-consultum of the 19th August, communicated to the legislative body on the 18th of September, the tribunate was abolished, and the members of this, still retaining their former salaries undiminished, transferred into the legislative body: committees of which were thenceforth to do the business of the tribunes. It was possible that a conjuncture might arise, which might strike out a spark of liberty, and even kindle a flame of patriotism among the tribunes, a kind of representatives, or advocates of the people. there was no danger of such an ascident happening in the senate. The princes of the blood, that is, the blood of Buonaparte, are members of the senate by their quality: the great dignitaries of the state, officially. And to this body, are associated the generals of division

But

detached

detached from foreign service: so that all these classes taken together, possess almost a numerical preponderancy in the senate. The meetings of the senate are always, prirate. Strangers may be admitted to those of the legislative body; but not to those of the senate. This last, during the whole double campaign in the North, was not once assembled.

According to the constitution, the judges were chosen for life. But by a senatus-consultum of the 12th of October this year, it was en. acted, that they should undergo a probation of five years, and then be continued, or dismissed. A commission was also created for the purpose of enquiring into the conduct of the judges in being, that the emperor might remove such as should be pronounced unfit for their stations. In all political cases, and all cases of alleged fraud and evasion, the authority of the ordinary courts was superseded by special tribunals: one of which, consisting of three judges appointed by the emperor, was established in each department.

The common objects of fiscal reulations, and the political dominion of the conscription, and of espionge, placed all offices of profit or trust, throughout the empire, that is, France, Italy, and the Low Countries, in the hands of French. men. In the countries, nominally allied to France, which were treated with less leuity than the territories nexed to the empire, public authority was everywhere exercised by Frenchmen. Not only were the government and civil employments in the kingdom of Westphalia administered exclusively by French. men; but the Napoleon code, that

is, a government on the plan of that of France, and the Freuch language established in its courts. in every thing. France gave the ton, and was held to be a model of excel lence. In one of the numbers of the Westpha'ian Moniteur, the French are called "la noblesse du genre humain." Clerks were draughted from the post-offices of Paris to conduct similar establishments in Hamburgh and Dantzig. The custom-house officers of Bourdeaux and Nants regulated the whole southern coast of the Baltic. For the purpose of excluding the English commerce, as was given out, and probably still more for that of retaining those parts in subjection, French troops lined the whole coast of Holland. Lewis Buonaparte, acceding, of course, to the desire of his brother, in shutting the ports of Holland against the English, was nevertheless believed to be too indulgent to the trading nation on whom he was imposed. Napoleon therefore, after a severe reprimand, ordered him not to let the fishing-boats, by means of which a smuggling tradə was carried on with the English, go to sea, without having in each a soldier, who should make a report of their proceedings.

Buonaparte, for the establish. ment of his influence and dominion in Germany, demanded in marriage for his brother Jerome, whom he had torn from his American wife, a daughter of the elector, or king of Saxony. The princess firmly resisted this project, and rejected the proposal with abhorrence. Af ter this, Jerome was married to the princess Catharine of Wirtemberg.

In both Westphalia and Bavaria, the men proper for bearing arms, T2

were

were organized into national guards, and drilled and trained with the greatest diligence and activity. Nor did Buonaparte hesitate to initiate the Bavarian generals in all the secrets or principles of the French tactics. He had great confidence in the king and court of Bavaria. He considered them as the rivals and enemies of the Austrians, against whom he designed in due time to employ them. For he could plainly perceive that Austria was not to be brought under his subjection without a struggle.. She was then, and had ever since the peace of Presburg been very actively employed in fostering a military spirit, and reviving public credit. The French troops were not withdrawn from Silesia, or other parts of Prussia. The Austrian fortress of Brannau, that had been retained contrary to the treaty of Presburg, was at last restored in October 1807; but the Austrian territory on the right bank of the Ilonzo was not. In exchange for this, by a treaty concluded at Fontainbleau in that month, the Austrians found it convenient to accept the town and dis. trict of Montialcone, on the left bank of that river; though, as the Austrians affirm,* this was not equal in value to the tenth part of the territory ceded on the right of the Houzo.

Some of the secret articles of the treaty of Tilsit were disclosed so early as the latter part of August. The mouths of the Cattaro were evacuated by the Russians, and put into the hands of the French; and French troops were carried by ships belonging to Russia, though yet professing peace and amity towards

England, from Otranto to the seven isles in the Ionian sea, whose inde. pendence had been recognized in a treaty between the Sublime Porte and Russia. All the seaport towns of Italy, those of the ecclesiastical states not excepted, were occupied by French troops, under the pretence of preventing their commerce with England. On the same pretence of waging war with the commerce of England, and enforcing the continental blockade, for the purpose of compelling the common enemy to make a maritime peace, large bodies of troops were marched to Boulogne, to Toulon, to Bourdeaux, and above all to Bayonne.

The treaty of Tilsit was hardly concluded, when Buonaparte turned his eyes towards the west of Europe, and resolved on the subjuga. tion of Portugal and Spain. Or, perhaps, it was at first his design, not directly or formally to subvert ths thrones of these kingdoms; but under the veil of alliance and union, to reduce them to the same total dependence on himself, as the confederation of the Rhine, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. Indeed, it would appear that he had some eye to this extension of his conquests, when he called the flower of the Spanish troops, as we have just seen, to Germany. He fomented, through Beauharnois, his ambassador at the court of Madrid, discord in the royal family of Spain, that he might assume to himself the arbi tration of their differences. The ambassador suggested to the prince of Asturias, the idea of intermarrying with a princess related to the emperor Napoleon. The anxiety of the prince to avoid another con

nection,

nection, into which an attempt was made to force him, with a lady selected for him by his greatest enemy, the favourite at once of the queen and the king, and on that account alone the object of his aversion, induced him to acquiesce in the proposition of Beauharnois; with the reservation that it was to meet with the approbation of his royal parents; and he wrote a letter, signifying his wishes, to the French emperor. The clandestine communication between the prince of Asturias, and other circumstances artfully prepared, gave colour to an accusation of the innocent prince. A few days after he wrote that letter, the prince of Asturias was arrested and confined in the monastery of St. Laurence. On the 31st of October, all the members of the different councils of state being as sembled, a declaration by the king was read, of a discovery that the prince of Asturias had formed a conspiracy for dethroning him. He had been surprised, it was said, in his own apartments, with the cyphers of his correspondence; which were laid before the council of Castille, with instructions to them to investigate the whole matter. The whole Spanish nation instantly suspected that the pretended conspiracy was an infernal calumny fabricated by the Prince of the Peace, Don Emanuel Godoy, for the purpose of removing the only obstacle that then opposed his audacious ambition.

The imprisonment of the prince of Asturias, and the decree fulminated against his royal person, produced an effect quite contrary to the expectations of the favourite ;

who now, being afraid, thought pro per to recede, and to mediate a re conciliation between the royal pa. rents and their son. He forged penitential letters, November 5, to. both the king and queen, and made the prince of Asturias, while a pri soner, sign them. There is nothing in the confessions of the prince, of a very heinous nature; and all that they can be fairly supposed to allude to, is the step he had taken, in writing to Napoleon, without the king's knowledge, on the subject of the projected marriage. But a decree that had been addressed, November 3, to archbishops, bishops, prelates, and all the clergy, both secular and irregular, for a solemn thanksgiving to God for the king's deliverance, was calculated to preserve the idea, that the prince had formed or entered into a conspiracy against his father's government, if not his life. On the same day that the prince's letters were received by the king and queen, November 5, a royal edict was addressed to the governor ad interim of the council of Castille, declaring that the voice of na. ture having disarmed the hand of vengeance, the king had been moved by pity, and the intercession of the queen, to pardon his penitent son, who had given information against the authors of the horrible design in contemplation.+

Such was the state of affairs, when a French courier arrived at the royal palace of St. Laurence, with a treaty concluded and signed at Fontainebleau, on the 27th of October, by don Eugenio Isquierdo, as plenipotentiary of his catholic majesty, and marshal Duroc, in the name of the emperor of the French.

By