chiefs, whom the First Consul
alone really feared.

Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone. In a paper which
Talleyrand read to the Institute of France in July, 1797, that
far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon the pacifying influences exerted
by foreign commerce and colonial settlements on a too introspective
nation. His words bear witness to the keenness of his insight into the
maladies of his own people and the sources of social and political
strength enjoyed by the United States, where he had recently
sojourned. Referring to their speedy recovery from the tumults of
their revolution, he said: "The true Lethe after passing through a
revolution is to be found in the opening out to men of every avenue of
hope.--Revolutions leave behind them a general restlessness of mind, a
need of movement." That need was met in America by man's warfare
against the forest, the flood, and the prairie. France must therefore
possess colonies as intellectual and political safety-valves; and in
his graceful, airy style he touched on the advantages offered by
Egypt, Louisiana, and West Africa, both for their intrinsic value and
as opening the door of work and of hope to a brain-sick generation.

Following up this clue, Bonaparte, at a somewhat later date, remarked
the tendency of the French people, now that the revolutionary strifes
were past, to settle down contentedly on their own little plots; and
he emphasized the need of a colonial policy such as would widen the
national life. The remark has been largely justified by events; and
doubtless he discerned in the agrarian reforms of the Revolution an
influence unfavourable to that racial dispersion which, under wise
guidance, builds up an oceanic empire. The grievances of the _ancien
regime_ had helped to scatter on the shores of the St. Lawrence the
seeds of a possible New France. Primogeniture was ever driving from
England her younger sons to found New Englands and expand the commerce
of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, content with her
perfect laws and with the conquest of her "natural frontiers." Let her
rather strive to regain the first place in colonial activity which the
follies of Louis XV. and the secular jealousy of Albion had filched
from her. In the effort she would extend the bounds of civilization,
lay the ghost of Jacobinism, satisfy military and naval adventures,
and unconsciously revert to the ideas and governmental methods of the
age of _le grand monarq