rupture might have been prevented."

"Such, Citizen First Consul!" answered the trembling and bowing Minister, "is not the opinion of the Counsellor of State, Citizen Joseph Bonaparte."

"Well, then," said Napoleon, as recollecting himself, "England wishes for war, and she shall suffer for it. This shall be a war of extermination, depend upon it."

The name of Joseph alone moderated Napoleon's fury, and changed its object. It is with him what the harp of David was with Saul. Talleyrand knows it, and is no loser by that knowledge. I must, however, in justice, say that, had Bonaparte followed his Minister's advice, and suffered himself to be entirely guided by his counsel, all hostilities with England at that time might have been avoided; her Government would have been lulled into security by the cession of Malta, and some commercial regulations, and her future conquest, during a time of peace, have been attempted upon plans duly organized, that might have ensured success. He never ceased to repeat, "Citizen First Consul! some few years longer peace with Great Britain, and the 'Te Deums' of modern Britons for the conquest and possession of Malta, will be considered by their children as the funeral hymns of their liberty and independence."

It was upon this memorable occasion of Lord Whitworth's departure, that Bonaparte is known to have betrayed the most outrageous acts of passion; he rudely forced his mother from his closet, and forbade his own sisters to approach his person; he confined Madame Bonaparte for several hours to her chamber; he dismissed favourite generals; treated with ignominy members of his Council of State; and towards his physician, secretaries, and principal attendants, he committed unbecoming and disgraceful marks of personal outrage. I have heard it affirmed that, though her husband, when shutting her up in her dressing-room, put the key in his pocket, Madame Napoleon found means to resent the ungallant behaviour of her spouse, with the assistance of Madame Remusat.

LETTER III.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:—No act of Bonaparte's government has occasioned so many, so opposite, and so violent debates, among the remnants of revolutionary factions comprising his Senate and Council of State, as the introduction and execution of the religious concordat signed with the Pope. Joseph was here again the ostensible negotiator, though he, on this as well as on former occasions, concluded nothing that had not been prepared and digested by Talleyrand.

Bonaparte does not in general pay much attention to the opinions of others when they do not agree with his own views and interests, or coincide with his plans of reform or innovation; but having in his public career professed himself by turns an atheist and an infidel, the worshipper of Christ and of Mahomet, he could not decently silence those who, after deserting or denying the God of their forefathers and of their youth, continued constant and firm in their apostasy. Of those who deliberated concerning the restoration or exclusion of Christianity, and the acceptance or rejection of the concordat, Fouche, Francois de Nantz, Roederer, and Sieges were for the religion of Nature; Volney, Real, Chaptal, Bourrienne, and Lucien Bonaparte for atheism; and Portalis, Gregoire, Cambaceres, Lebrun, Talleyrand, Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte for Christianity. Besides the sentiments of these confidential counsellors, upwards of two hundred memoirs, for or against the Christian religion, were presented to the First Consul by uninvited and volunteer counsellors,—all differing as much from one another as the members of his own Privy Council.

Many persons do Madame Bonaparte, the mother, the honour of supposing that to her assiduous representations is principally owing the recall of the priests, and the restoration of the altars of Christ. She certainly is the most devout, or rather the most superstitious of her family, and of her name; but had not Talleyrand and Portalis previously convinced Napoleon of the policy of reestablishing a religion which, for fourteen centuries, had preserved the throne of the Bourbons from the machinations of republicans and other conspirators against monarchy, it is very probable that her representations would have been as ineffective as her piety or her prayers. So long ago as 1796 she implored the mercy of Napoleon for the Roman Catholics in Italy; and entreated him to spare the Pope and the papal territory, at the very time that his soldiers were laying waste and ravaging the legacy of Bologna and of Ravenna, both incorporated with his new-formed Cisalpine Republic; where one of his first acts of sovereignty, in the name of the then sovereign people, was the confiscation of Church lands and the sale of the estates of the clergy.

Of the prelates who with Joseph Bonaparte signed the concordat, the Cardinal Gonsalvi and the Bishop Bernier have, by their labours and intrigues, not a little contributed to the present Church establishment, in this country; and to them Napoleon is much indebted for the intrusion of the Bonaparte, dynasty, among the houses of sovereign Princes. The former, intended from his youth for the Church, sees neither honour in this world, nor hopes for any blessing in the next, but exclusively from its bosom and its doctrine. With capacity to figure as a country curate, he occupies the post of the chief Secretary of State to the Pope; and though nearly of the same age, but of a much weaker constitution than his Sovereign, he was ambitious enough to demand Bonaparte's promise of succeeding to the Papal See, and weak and wicked enough to wish and expect to survive a benefactor of a calmer mind and better health than himself. It was he who encouraged Bonaparte to require the presence of Pius VII. in France, and who persuaded this weak pontiff to undertake a journey that has caused so much scandal among the truly faithful; and which, should ever Austria regain its former supremacy in Italy, will send the present Pope to end his days in a convent, and make the successors of St. Peter what this Apostle was himself, a Bishop of Rome, and nothing more.

Bernier was a curate in La Vendee before the Revolution, and one of those priests who lighted the torch of civil war in that unfortunate country, under pretence of defending the throne of his King and the altars of his God. He not only possessed great popularity among the lower classes, but acquired so far the confidence of the Vendean chiefs that he was appointed one of the supreme and directing Council of the Royalists and Chouans. Even so late as the summer of 1799 he continued not only unsuspected, but trusted by the insurgents in the Western departments. In the winter, however, of the same year he had been gained over by Bonaparte's emissaries, and was seen at his levies in the Tuileries. It is stated that General Brune made him renounce his former principles, desert his former companions, and betray to the then First Consul of the French Republic the secrets of the friends of lawful monarchy, of the faithful subjects of Louis XVIII. His perfidy has been rewarded with one hundred and fifty thousand livres in ready money, with the see of Orleans, and with a promise of a cardinal's hat. He has also, with the Cardinals Gonsalvi, Caprara, Fesch, Cambaceres, and Mauri, Bonaparte's promise, and, of course, the expectation of the Roman tiara. He was one of the prelates who officiated at the late coronation, and is now confided in as a person who has too far committed himself with his legitimate Prince, and whose past treachery, therefore, answers for his future fidelity.

This religious concordat of the 10th September, 1801, as well as all other constitutional codes emating from revolutionary authorities, proscribes even in protecting. The professors and protectors of the religion of universal peace, benevolence, and forgiveness banish in this concordat from France forever the Cardinals Rohan and Montmorency, and the Bishop of Arras, whose dutiful