depended upon in the
different Government offices in order to obtain exact information of
all plans with respect to foreign or internal affairs. The
knowledge of these plans will supply the best means of defeating
them; and failure is the way to bring the Government into complete
discredit--the first and most important step towards the end
proposed. Try to gain over trustworthy agents in the different
Government departments. Endeavour, also, to learn what passes in
the secret committee, which is supposed to be established at St
Cloud, and composed of the friends of the First Consul. Be careful
to furnish information of the various projects which Bonaparte may
entertain relative to Turkey and Ireland. Likewise send
intelligence respecting the movements of troops, respecting vessels
and ship-building, and all military preparations.

Drake, in his instructions, also recommended that the subversion of
Bonaparte's Government should, for the time, be the only object in view,
and that nothing should be said about the King's intentions until certain
information could be obtained respecting his views; but most of his
letters and instructions were anterior to 1804. The whole bearing of the
seized documents proved what Bonaparte could not be ignorant of, namely,
that England was his constant enemy; but after examining them, I was of
opinion that they contained nothing which could justify the belief that
the Government of Great Britain authorised any attempt at assassination.

When the First Consul received the report of the Grand Judge relative to
Drake's plots' against his Government he transmitted a copy of it to the
Senate, and it was in reply to this communication that the Senate made
those first overtures which Bonaparte thought vague, but which,
nevertheless, led to the formation of the Empire. Notwithstanding this
important circumstance, I have not hitherto mentioned Drake, because his
intrigues for Bonaparte's overthrow appeared to me to be more immediately
connected with the preliminaries of the trial of Georges and Moreau,
which I shall notice in my next chapter.

--[These were not plots for assassination. Bonaparte, in the same
way, had his secret agents in every country of Europe, without
excepting England. Alison (chap. xxxvii. par. 89) says on this
matter of Drake that, though the English agents were certainly
attempting a counter-revolution, they had no idea of