blics. Religion, government, customs,
and property, shall be respected. That the people may be without
apprehension, the most severe discipline shall be maintained. All that
may be provided for the army shall be faithfully paid for in money.
The general-in-chief engages the officers of the Republic of Venice,
the magistrates, and the priests, to make known these sentiments to
the people, in order that confidence may cement that friendship which
has so long united the two nations, faithful in the path of honour, as
in that of victory. The French soldier is terrible only to the enemies
of his liberty and his Government. Buonaparte.'

This proclamation was followed by exactions similar to those which
were practised against Genoa, by the renewal of similar professions of
friendship, and the use of similar means to excite insurrection. At
length, in the spring of 1797, occasion was taken from disturbances
thus excited, to forge, in the name of the Venetian Government, a
proclamation[9], hostile to France; and this proceeding was made the
ground for military execution against the country, and for
effecting by force the subversion of its ancient government and the
establishment of the democratic forms of the French revolution. This
revolution was sealed by a treaty, signed in May, 1797, between
Buonaparte and commissioners appointed on the part of the new and
revolutionary Government of Venice. By the second and third secret
articles of this treaty, Venice agreed to give as a ransom, to secure
itself against all farther exactions or demands, the sum of three
millions of livres in money, the value of three millions more in
articles of naval supply, and three ships of the line; and it received
in return the assurances of the friendship and support of the French
Republic. Immediately after the signature of this treaty, the arsenal,
the library, and the palace of St. Marc were ransacked and plundered,
and heavy additional contributions were imposed upon its inhabitants:
and, in not more than four months afterwards, this very Republic of
Venice, united by alliance to France, the creature of Buonaparte
himself, from whom it had received the present of French liberty, was
by the same Buonaparte transferred under the Treaty of Campo Formio,
to 'that iron yoke of the proud House of Austria', to deliver it from
which he had represented in his first proclamation to be the great
object of all his operations.

Sir, all this is followed b