ppiness of nations. France takes a pleasure in
frankly proclaiming this noble end of all her wishes. Jealous of her
own independence, the invariable principle of her politics will be the
most absolute respect for the independence of other nations. If such
be the personal sentiments of your Majesty, as I am happy to persuade
myself, the general tranquillity is ensured for a long time to come;
and justice, sitting on the confines of states, will be sufficient
alone to guard their frontiers.

"Paris, the 4th of April."

The Duke of Vicenza received orders, personally to express to the
foreign ministers the sentiments, with which the Emperor was animated:
but the couriers, who carried his despatches, could not reach the
places of their destination; one was arrested at Kehl, another at
Mayence; a third, sent off for Italy, could not get beyond Turin; the
communications were interrupted. The arrangements of the declaration
of the congress of Vienna of the 13th of March were acted upon
already.

This declaration, transmitted directly by the emissaries of the King
to the prefects of the frontier cities, and distributed by the
royalists, was in circulation at Paris. The inferior papers had
announced its appearance, and united in asserting, that such an act
was unworthy of the allied sovereigns, and could only be the work of
calumny and malevolence.

However, when it became impossible to question its legitimacy, it was
necessary to come to the resolution of no longer making a mystery of
it to the French people; and accordingly the following account was
given of it in the Moniteur on the 13th of April.

"Council of Ministers.

"_Sitting of the 29th of March._

"The Duke of Otranto, minister of the general police, states, that he
is about to read to the council a declaration, dated Vienna the 13th,
which is supposed to have been issued by the congress:

"That this declaration, as it contains an incentive to the
assassination of the Emperor, appears to him apocryphal: that, if it
should prove genuine, it would be unexampled in the history of the
world: that the libellous style, in which it is written, gives room to
suppose, it ought to be classed among the papers fabricated by
party-spirit, and by those pamphleteers, who of late years have
foisted themselves uncommissioned into all state affairs: that it
pretends to be signed by the English ministers; but it is impossible
to suppose, that the ministers