r their comforts to
the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive
to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian civilization; and
it would be equally futile to deny to him the same beneficent aims
with regard to the settlement of the plains of the Mississippi, and
the coasts of New Holland.

The peculiarities of the condition of France furnished another
powerful impulse towards colonization. In the last decade her people
had suffered from an excess of mental activity and nervous excitement.
From philosophical and political speculation they must be brought back
to the practical and prosaic; and what influence could be so healthy
as the turning up of new soil and other processes that satisfy the
primitive instincts? Some of these, it was true, were being met by the
increasing peasant proprietary in France herself. But this internal
development, salutary as it was, could not appease the restless
spirits of the towns or the ambition of the soldiery. Foreign
adventures and oceanic commerce alone could satisfy the Parisians and
open up new careers for the Praetorian chiefs, whom the First Consul
alone really feared.

Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone. In a paper which
Talleyrand read to the Institute of France in July, 1797, that
far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon the pacifying influences exerted
by foreign commerce and colonial settlements on a too introspective
nation. His words bear witness to the keenness of his insight into the
maladies of his own people and the sources of social and political
strength enjoyed by the United States, where he had recently
sojourned. Referring to their speedy recovery from the tumults of
their revolution, he said: "The true Lethe after passing through a
revolution is to be found in the opening out to men of every avenue of
hope.--Revolutions leave behind them a general restlessness of mind, a
need of movement." That need was met in America by man's warfare
against the forest, the flood, and the prairie. France must therefore
possess colonies as intellectual and political safety-valves; and in
his graceful, airy style he touched on the advantages offered by
Egypt, Louisiana, and West Africa, both for their intrinsic value and
as opening the door of work and of hope to a brain-sick generation.

Following up this clue, Bonaparte, at a somewhat later date, remarked
the tendency of the French people, now that the revolutionary strifes
were past, to se