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 ministers, their answer was obvious:  “Our courts of law are open—­we are ourselves accustomed to be abused as you are, and in them we, like you, have our only resource.”  The paragraphs in the Moniteur, on the other hand, were, it was impossible to deny, virtually so many manifestoes of the Tuileries.

Of all the popular engines which moved the spleen of Napoleon, the most offensive was a newspaper (L’Ambigu) published in the French language, in London, by one Peltier, a royalist emigrant; and, in spite of all the advice which could be offered, he at length condescended to prosecute the author in the English courts of law.  M. Peltier had the good fortune to retain, as his counsel, Mr. Mackintosh,[45] an advocate of most brilliant talents, and, moreover, especially distinguished for his support of the original principles of the French Revolution.  On the trial which ensued, this orator, in defence of his client, delivered a philippic against the personal character and ambitious measures of Napoleon, immeasurably more calculated to injure the Chief Consul in public opinion throughout Europe, than all the efforts of a thousand newspapers; and, though the jury found Peltier guilty of libel, the result was, on the whole, a signal triumph to the party of whom he had been the organ.

This was a most imprudent, as well as undignified proceeding; but ere the defendant, Peltier, could be called up for judgment, the doubtful relations of the Chief Consul and the cabinet of St. James’s were to assume a different appearance.  The truce of St. Amiens already approached its close.  Buonaparte had, perhaps, some right to complain of the unbridled abuse of the British press:  but the British government had a far more serious cause of reclamation against him.  Under pretence of establishing French consuls for the protection of commerce, he sent persons, chiefly of the military profession, who carried orders to make exact plans of all the harbours and coasts of the United Kingdom.  These gentlemen endeavoured to execute their commission with all possible privacy; but the discovery of their occupation was soon made; they were sent back to France without ceremony; and this treacherous measure of their government was openly denounced as a violation of every rule of international law, and a plain symptom of warlike preparation.