ngth expelled, in November,
1803, the independence of _Hayti_ was formally proclaimed on the 1st of
January, 1804.

The course of Napoleon's conduct, in and out of Europe, was calculated
to fill all independent neighbours with new or aggravated suspicion; and
in England, where public opinion possesses the largest means of making
itself heard, and consequently the greatest power, the prevalence of
such feelings became, from day to day, more marked. The British envoy's
reclamation against the oppression of Switzerland, was but one of many
drops, which were soon to cause the cup of bitterness to overflow. As in
most quarrels, there was something both of right and of wrong on either
side. When the English government remonstrated against any of those
daring invasions of the rights of independent nations, or crafty
enlargements, through diplomatic means, of the power of France, by which
this period of peace was distinguished, the Chief Consul could always
reply that the cabinet of St. James's, on their part, had not yet
fulfilled one article of the treaty of Amiens, by placing Malta in the
keeping of some power which had been neutral in the preceding war. The
rejoinder was obvious: to wit, that Napoleon was every day taking
measures wholly inconsistent with that balance of power which the treaty
of Amiens contemplated. It is not to be denied that he, in his
audaciously ambitious movements, had contrived to keep within the strict
terms of the treaty: and it can as little be disputed that the English
cabinet had _equity_ with them, although they violated the letter of the
law, in their retention of the inheritance of the worthless and
self-betrayed Knights of St. John.

The feelings of the rival nations, however, were soon kindled into rage;
and, on either side of the Channel the language of the public prints
assumed a complexion of even more bitter violence than had been
observable during the war. The English journalists resorted to foul, and
often false and even absurd, personal criminations of the Chief Consul:
and the Parisian newspapers replied in language equally indefensible on
the score of truth and decency, but with this most essential difference,
that whereas the press of England was free, that of France, being
entirely under the control of Fouche and the police, could not, as all
men knew, put forth any such calumnies otherwise than with the consent
of the consular government. When Napoleon complained to the English