Cambaceres, though before the Revolution a nobleman of a Parliamentary family, was so degraded and despised for his unnatural and beastly propensities, that to see him in the ranks of rebellion was not unexpected.  Born in Languedoc, his countrymen were the first to suffer from his revolutionary proceedings, and reproached him as one of the most active instruments of persecution against the clergy of Toulouse, and as one of the causes of all the blood that flowed in consequence.  A coward as well as a traitor, after the death of Louis XVI. he never dared ascend the tribune of the National Convention, but always gave a silent vote to all the atrocious laws proposed and carried by Marat, Robespierre, and their accomplices.  It was in 1795, when the Reign of Terror had ceased, that he first displayed his zeal for anarchy, and his hatred to royalty; his contemptible and disgusting vices were, however, so publicly reprobated, that even the Directory dared not nominate him a Minister of Justice, a place for which he intrigued in vain, from 1796 to 1799; when Bonaparte, either not so scrupulous, or setting himself above the public opinion, caused him to be called to the Consulate; which, in 1802, was ensured him for life, but exchanged, in 1804, for the office of an Arch-Chancellor.

He is now worth thirty millions of livres—­all honestly obtained by his revolutionary industry.  Besides a Prince, a Serene Highness, an Arch-Chancellor, a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, he is also a Knight of the Prussian Black Eagle!  For his brother, who was for a long time an emigrant clergyman, and whom he then renounced as a fanatic, he has now procured the Archbishopric of Rouen and a Cardinal’s hat.  His Eminence is also a grand officer of the Legion of Honour in France, and a Pope in petto at Rome.

LETTER XIV.

Paris, September, 1805.

My lord:—­No Sovereign Prince has more incurred the hatred of Bonaparte than the present King of Sweden; and I have heard from good authority that our Government spares neither bribes nor intrigues to move the tails of those factions which were dissolved, but not crushed, after the murder of Gustavus iii.  The Swedes are generally brave and loyal, but their history bears witness that they are easily misled; all their grand achievements are their own, and the consequence of their national spirit and national valour, while all their disasters have been effected by the influence of foreign gold and of foreign machinations.  Had they not been the dupes of the plots and views of the Cabinets of Versailles and St. Petersburg, their country might have been as powerful in the nineteenth century as it was in the seventeenth.

That Gustavus iv. both knew the danger of Europe, and indicated the remedy, His Majesty’s notes, as soon as he came of age, presented by the able and loyal Minister Bildt to the Diet of Ratisbon, evince.  Had they been more attended to during 1798 and 1799, Bonaparte would not, perhaps, have now been so great, but the Continent would have remained more free and more independent.  They were the first causes of our Emperor’s official anger against the Cabinet of Stockholm.