I will here notice the quarrel between the First Consul and the English newspapers, and give a new proof of his views concerning the freedom of the press.  However, liberty of the press did once contribute to give him infinite gratification, namely, when all the London journals mentioned the transports of joy manifested in London on the arrival of General Lauriston, the bearer of the ratification of the preliminaries of peace.

The First Consul was at all times the declared enemy of the liberty of the press, and therefore he ruled the journals with a hand of iron.

—­[An incident, illustrative of the great irritation which Bonaparte felt at the plain speaking of the English press, also shows the important character of Coleridge’s writings in the ‘Morning Post’.  In the course of a debate in the House of Commons Fox asserted that the rupture of the trace of Amiens had its origin in certain essays which had appeared in the Morning post, and which were known to have proceeded from the pen of Coleridge.  But Fox added an ungenerous and malicious hint that the writer was at Rome, within the reach of Bonaparte.  The information reached the ears for which it was uttered, and an order was sent from Paris to compass the arrest of Coleridge.  It was in the year 1806, when the poet was making a tour in Italy.  The news reached him at Naples, through a brother of the illustrious Humboldt, as Mr. Gillman says—­or in a friendly warning from Prince Jerome Bonaparte, as we have it on the authority of Mr. Cottle—­and the Pope appears to have been reluctant to have a hand in the business, and, in fact, to have furnished him with a passport, if not with a carriage for flight, Coleridge eventually got to Leghorn, where he got a passage by an American ship bound for England; but his escape coming to the ears of Bonaparte, a look-out was kept for the ship, and she was chased by a French cruiser, which threw the captain into such a state of terror that he made Coleridge throw all his journals and papers overboard (Andrews’ History of Journalism, vol. ii. p. 28).]—­

I have often heard him say, “Were I to slacken the reins, I should not continue three months in power.”  He unfortunately held the same opinion respecting every other prerogative of public freedom.  The silence he had imposed in France he wished, if he could, to impose in England.  He was irritated by the calumnies and libels so liberally cast upon him by the English journals, and especially by one written in French, called ‘L’Ambigu’, conducted by Peltier, who had been the editor of the ’Actes des Apotres’ in Paris.  The ‘Ambigu’ was constantly teeming with the most violent attacks on the First Consul and the French nation.  Bonaparte could never, like the English, bring himself to despise newspaper libels, and he revenged himself by violent articles which he caused to be inserted in the ‘Moniteur’.  He directed M. Otto to remonstrate, in an official