composed of the friends of the First Consul. Be careful
to furnish information of the various projects which Bonaparte may
entertain relative to Turkey and Ireland. Likewise send
intelligence respecting the movements of troops, respecting vessels
and ship-building, and all military preparations.

Drake, in his instructions, also recommended that the subversion of
Bonaparte's Government should, for the time, be the only object in view,
and that nothing should be said about the King's intentions until certain
information could be obtained respecting his views; but most of his
letters and instructions were anterior to 1804. The whole bearing of the
seized documents proved what Bonaparte could not be ignorant of, namely,
that England was his constant enemy; but after examining them, I was of
opinion that they contained nothing which could justify the belief that
the Government of Great Britain authorised any attempt at assassination.

When the First Consul received the report of the Grand Judge relative to
Drake's plots' against his Government he transmitted a copy of it to the
Senate, and it was in reply to this communication that the Senate made
those first overtures which Bonaparte thought vague, but which,
nevertheless, led to the formation of the Empire. Notwithstanding this
important circumstance, I have not hitherto mentioned Drake, because his
intrigues for Bonaparte's overthrow appeared to me to be more immediately
connected with the preliminaries of the trial of Georges and Moreau,
which I shall notice in my next chapter.

--[These were not plots for assassination. Bonaparte, in the same
way, had his secret agents in every country of Europe, without
excepting England. Alison (chap. xxxvii. par. 89) says on this
matter of Drake that, though the English agents were certainly
attempting a counter-revolution, they had no idea of encouraging the
assassination of Napoleon, while "England was no match for the
French police agents in a transaction of this description, for the
publication of Regular revealed the mortifying fact that the whole
correspondence both of Drake and Spencer Smith had been regularly
transmitted, as fast as it took place, to the police of Paris, and
that their principal corresponded in that city, M. Mehu de la
Tonche, was himself an agent of the police, employed to tempt the
British envoys into this perilous enterprise."]--

At the same time that