rtance of Malta, the Addington
Cabinet did not insist on retaining it, if the French Government would
"suggest some other _equivalent security_ by which His Majesty's
object in claiming the permanent possession of Malta may be
accomplished and the independence of the island secured conformably to
the spirit of the 10th Article of the Treaty of Amiens."[251] To the
First Consul was therefore left the initiative in proposing some other
plan which would safeguard British interests in the Levant; and, with
this qualifying explanation, the British ambassador was charged to
present to him the following proposals for a new treaty: Malta to
remain in British hands, the Knights to be indemnified for any losses
of property which they may thereby sustain: Holland and Switzerland to
be evacuated by French troops: the island of Elba to be confirmed to
France, and the King of Etruria to be acknowledged by Great Britain:
the Italian and Ligurian Republics also to be acknowledged, if "an
arrangement is made in Italy for the King of Sardinia, which shall be
satisfactory to him."

Lord Whitworth judged it better not to present these demands point
blank, but gradually to reveal their substance. This course, he
judged, would be less damaging to the friends of peace at the
Tuileries, and less likely to affront Napoleon. But it was all one and
the same. The First Consul, in his present state of highly wrought
tension, practically ignored the suggestion of an _equivalent
security,_ and declaimed against the perfidy of England for daring to
infringe the treaty, though he had offered no opposition to the Czar's
proposals respecting Malta, which weakened the stability of the Order
and sensibly modified that same treaty.

Talleyrand was more conciliatory; and there is little doubt that, had
the First Consul allowed his brother Joseph and his Foreign Minister
wider powers, the crisis might have been peaceably passed. Joseph
Bonaparte urgently pressed Whitworth to be satisfied with Corfu or
Crete in place of Malta; but he confessed that the suggestion was
quite unauthorized, and that the First Consul was so enraged on the
Maltese Question that he dared not broach it to him.[252] Indeed, all
through these critical weeks Napoleon's relations to his brothers were
very strained, they desiring peace in Europe so that Louisiana might
even now be saved to France, while the First Consul persisted in his
oriental schemes. He seems now to have concentrated