rs,
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
Bonaparte called it, mercantile spirit, so enraged him, that he had
already signed an order for arresting and transferring en masse his high
allies, the Batavian directors, to his Temple, when the representations
of Talleyrand moderated his fury, and caused the order to be recalled,
which Fouche was ready to execute.

Had Jerome Bonaparte not offended his brother by his transatlantic
marriage, he would long ago have been the Prince Stadtholder of Holland;
but his disobedience was so far useful to the Cabinet of St. Cloud as it
gave it an opportunity of intriguing with, or deluding, other Cabinets
that might have any pretensions to interfere in the regulation of the
Batavian Government. By the choice finally made, you may judge how
difficult it was to find a suitable subject to represent it, and that
this representation is intended only to be temporary.

Schimmelpenninck, the present grand pensionary of the Batavian Republic,
was destined by his education for the bar, but by his natural parts to
await in quiet obscurity the end of a dull existence. With some
property, little information, and a tolerably good share of common sense,
he might have lived and died respected, and even regretted, without any
pretension, or perhaps even ambition, to shine. The anti-Orange faction,
to which his parents and family appertained, pushed him forward, and
elected him, in 1795, a member of the First Batavian National Convention,
where, according to the spirit of the times, his speeches were rather
those of a demagogue than those of a Republican. Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity were the constant themes of his political declamations,
infidelity his religious profession, and the examples of immorality, his
social lessons; so rapid and dangerous are the strides with which
seduction frequently advances on weak minds.

In 1800 he was appointed an Ambassador to Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles
Maurice Talleyrand. The latter used him as a stockbroker, and the former
for anything he thought proper; and he was the