matter or in manner, from the
respect they impose.

"They would have felt, that, agreeably to the laws of nations, a
prince, however trifling the extent or population of his state,
enjoys, as far as regards his political and civil character, the
rights belonging to every sovereign prince in respect to the most
powerful monarch; and Napoleon, acknowledged under the title of
Emperor, and in quality of a sovereign prince, by all the powers, was
no more amenable to the congress of Vienna than any of them.

"The forgetfulness of these principles, impossible to be supposed in
plenipotentiaries, who weigh the rights of nations maturely with
wisdom and consideration, has nothing astonishing in it when
manifested by French ministers, whose conscience reproaches them with
more than one act of treason, in whom fear has engendered rage, and
whose remorse leads their reason astray.

"Such men as these may have risked the fabrication and the
publication of a piece like the pretended declaration of the 13th of
March, in the hope of stopping the progress of Napoleon, and
misleading the French people with regard to the real sentiments of
foreign powers.

"But they cannot judge like these powers of the merits of a nation,
which they have misunderstood, betrayed, and delivered up to the arms
of foreigners.

"This nation, brave and generous, revolts against every thing that
bears the marks of cowardice and oppression: its affections are
heightened, when the object of them is threatened or affected by a
great injustice; and assassination, which the commencement of the
declaration of the 13th of March is intended to excite, will find not
a single hand to execute it, either among the twenty-five millions of
Frenchmen, the majority of whom attended, guarded, and protected
Napoleon from the Mediterranean to the capital; nor among the eighteen
millions of Italians, the six millions of Belgians or inhabitants of
the banks of the Rhine, and the numerous nations of Germany, who, on
this solemn occasion, have not pronounced his name without respectful
remembrance; nor a single individual of the indignant English nation,
whose honourable sentiments disavow the language, that those men have
dared to attribute to the sovereigns.

"The people of Europe are enlightened; they judge the rights of
Napoleon, the rights of the allied princes, and those of the Bourbons.

"They know, that the convention of Fontainbleau was a treaty between
sovereigns.