against England on this
score."[184]

This interesting report gives a glimpse into the real thought of Paris
such as is rarely afforded by the tamed or venal Press. As Bonaparte's
spies enabled him to feel every throb of the French pulse, he must at
once have seen how great was the prestige which he gained by these
first diplomatic successes, and how precarious was the foothold of the
English Ministers on the slippery grade of concession to which they
had been lured. Addington surely should have remembered that only the
strong man can with safety recede at the outset, and that an act of
concession which, coming from a master mind, is interpreted as one of
noble magnanimity, will be scornfully snatched from a nerveless hand
as a sign of timorous complaisance. But the public statements and the
secret avowals of our leaders show that they wished "to try the
experiment of peace," now that France had returned to ordinary
political conditions and Jacobinism was curbed by Bonaparte.
"Perhaps," wrote Castlereagh, "France, satisfied with her recent
acquisitions, will find her interest in that system of internal
improvement which is necessarily connected with peace."[185] There is
no reason for doubting the sincerity of this statement. Our policy was
distinctly and continuously complaisant: France regained her colonies:
she was not required to withdraw from Switzerland and Holland. Who
could expect, from what was then known of Bonaparte's character, that
a peace so fraught with glory and profit would not satisfy French
honour and his own ambition?

Peace, then, was an "experiment." The British Government wished to see
whether France would turn from revolution and war to agriculture and
commerce, whether her young ruler be satisfied with a position of
grandeur and solid power such as Louis XIV. had rarely enjoyed. Alas!
the failure of the experiment was patent to all save the blandest
optimists long before the Preliminaries of London took form in the
definitive Treaty of Amiens. Bonaparte's aim now was to keep our
Government strictly to the provisional terms of peace which it had
imprudently signed. Even before the negotiations were opened at
Amiens, he ordered Joseph Bonaparte to listen to no proposal
concerning the King of Sardinia and the ex-Stadholder of Holland,
and asserted that the "internal affairs of the Batavian Republic, of
Germany, of Helvetia, and of the Italian Republics" were "absolutely
alien to the discuss