This message was dignified, and free from that vein of boasting in which Bonaparte so frequently indulged.  The reply of the Senate was accompanied by a vote of a ship of the line, to be paid for out of the Senatorial salaries.  With his usual address Bonaparte, in acting for himself, spoke in the name of the people, just as he did in the question of the Consulate for life.  But what he then did for his own interests turned to the future interests of the Bourbons.  The very treaty which had just been broken off gave rise to a curious observation.  Bonaparte, though not yet a sovereign, peremptorily required the King of England to renounce the empty title of King of France, which was kept up as if to imply that old pretensions were not yet renounced.  The proposition was acceded to, and to this circumstance was owing the disappearance of the title of King of France from among the titles of the King of England, when the treaty of Paris was concluded on the return of the Bourbons.

The first grievance complained of by England was the prohibition of English merchandise, which had been more rigid since the peace than during the war.  The avowal of Great Britain on this point might well have enabled her to dispense with any other subject of complaint; for the truth is, she was alarmed at the aspect of our internal prosperity, and at the impulse given to our manufactures.  The English Government had hoped to obtain from the First Consul such a commercial treaty as would have proved a death-blow to our rising trade; but Bonaparte opposed this, and from the very circumstance of his refusal he might easily have foreseen the rupture at which he affected to be surprised.  What I state I felt at the time, when I read with great interest all the documents relative to this great dispute between the two rival nations, which eleven years afterwards was decided before the walls of Paris.

It was evidently disappointment in regard to a commercial treaty which created the animosity of the English Government, as that circumstance was alluded to, by way of reproach, in the King of England’s declaration.  In that document it was complained that France had sent a number of persona into the ports of Great Britain and Ireland in the character of commercial agents, which character, and the privileges belonging to it, they could only have acquired by a commercial treaty.  Such was, in my opinion, the real cause of the complaints of England; but as it would have seemed too absurd to make it the ground of a declaration of war, she enumerated other grievances, viz., the union of Piedmont and of the states of Parma and Piacenza with France, and the continuance of the French troops in Holland.  A great deal was said about the views and projects of France with respect to Turkey, and this complaint originated in General Sebastiani’s mission to Egypt.  On that point I can take upon me to say that the English Government was not misinformed.  Bonaparte too frequently spoke to are of his ideas respecting the East, and his project of attacking the English power in India, to leave any doubt of his ever having renounced them.  The result of all the reproaches which the two Governments addressed to each other was, that neither acted with good faith.