if our European
conquests are consolidated by a general peace, France will, within
ten years, subjugate all Europe, Great Britain included, despite
all her vast dominions in India. Only within the last few days have
people here believed in the sincerity of the English preliminaries
of peace, and they say everywhere that, after having gloriously
sailed past the rocks that Bonaparte's cunning had placed in its
track, the British Ministry has completely foundered at the mouth
of the harbour. People blame the whole structure of the peace as
betraying marks of feebleness in all that concerns the dignity and
the interests of the King; ... and we cannot excuse its neglect of
the royalists, whose interests are entirely set aside in the
preliminaries. Men are especially astonished at England's
retrocession of Martinique without a single stipulation for the
colonists there, who are at the mercy of a government as rapacious
as it is fickle. All the owners of colonial property are very
uneasy, and do not hide their annoyance against England on this
score."[184]

This interesting report gives a glimpse into the real thought of Paris
such as is rarely afforded by the tamed or venal Press. As Bonaparte's
spies enabled him to feel every throb of the French pulse, he must at
once have seen how great was the prestige which he gained by these
first diplomatic successes, and how precarious was the foothold of the
English Ministers on the slippery grade of concession to which they
had been lured. Addington surely should have remembered that only the
strong man can with safety recede at the outset, and that an act of
concession which, coming from a master mind, is interpreted as one of
noble magnanimity, will be scornfully snatched from a nerveless hand
as a sign of timorous complaisance. But the public statements and the
secret avowals of our leaders show that they wished "to try the
experiment of peace," now that France had returned to ordinary
political conditions and Jacobinism was curbed by Bonaparte.
"Perhaps," wrote Castlereagh, "France, satisfied with her recent
acquisitions, will find her interest in that system of internal
improvement which is necessarily connected with peace."[185] There is
no reason for doubting the sincerity of this statement. Our policy was
distinctly and continuously complaisant: France regained her colonies:
she was not requ