Holland.

LETTER XXXII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Not to give umbrage to the Cabinet of Berlin, Bonaparte
communicated to it the necessity he was under of altering the form of
Government in Holland, and, if report be true, even condescended to ask
advice concerning a chief magistrate for that country. The young Prince
of Orange, brother-in-law of His Prussian Majesty, naturally presented
himself; but, after some time, Talleyrand's agents discovered that great
pecuniary sacrifices could not be expected from that quarter, and perhaps
less submission to France experienced than from the former governors. An
eye was then cast on the Elector of Bavaria, whose past patriotism, as
well as that of his Ministers, was a full guarantee for future obedience.
Had he consented to such an arrangement, Austria might have aggrandized
herself on the Inn, Prussia in Franconia, and France in Italy; and the
present bone of contest would have been chiefly removed.

This intrigue, for it was nothing else, was carried on by the Cabinet of
St. Cloud in March, 1804, about the time that Germany was invaded and the
Duc d'Enghien seized. This explains to you the reason why the Russian
note, delivered to the Diet of Ratisbon on the 8th of the following May,
was left without any support, except the ineffectual one from the King of
Sweden. How any Cabinet could be dupe enough to think Bonaparte serious,
or the Elector of Bavaria so weak as to enter into his schemes, is
difficult to be conceived, had not Europe witnessed still greater
credulity on one side, and still greater effrontery on the other.

In the meantime Bonaparte grew every day more discontented with the
Batavian Directory, and more irritated against the members who composed
it. Against his regulations for excluding the commerce and productions
of your country, they resented with spirit instead of obeying them
without murmur as was required. He is said to have discovered, after his
own soldiers had forced the custom-house officers to obey his orders,
that, while in their proclamations the directors publicly prohibited the
introduction of British goods, some of them were secret insurers of this
forbidden merchandise, introduced by fraud and by smuggling; and that
while they officially wished for the success of the French arms and
destruction of England, they withdrew by stealth what property they had
in the French funds, to place it in the English. This refractory and, as
B