first imbibed from you and Adam Smith. They make a woeful slow progress, but I cannot look upon them as extinct; on the contrary they must prevail in the end like the sea. What they lose in one place they gain in another. There is nothing would give me more pleasure than to discuss all these subjects with you once more before we die, but I am afraid it will be impossible for me to think of it before the year after next. If I live till then, my health will not leave me an option. The dampness and uncertainty of this climate disagrees with me every year more. You used to tell me that you were ten or twelve years older than me, but I can now tell you that I am ten or twelve years older than you."[1]
The projected journey never took place. After the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens, the restless ambition of Bonaparte never paused in pushing his schemes for universal dominion on the continent of Europe, and angry recriminations continued to be bandied between the Governments of France and England. The peace was indeed a hollow truce, and it may be fairly doubted if war could long have been avoided under any circumstances. The Addington Administration unfortunately did their best to place their country in the wrong. They not only showed an unwarrantable tardiness in executing several of the provisions of the peace, but in the ultimatum which Lord Whitworth presented to the First Consul, on the 10th May 1803, demanded the evacuation of Switzerland by the French troops, and a territorial equivalent for the dispossessed King of Sardinia in Italy. On both points France had the advantage in argument; for the affairs of Switzerland had been arranged by the Treaty of Luneville, which gave the Emperor, but not England, a right to interfere; while whatever changes had been recently introduced into that country diminished rather than increased French influence, compared with what it had been in 1799. Sardinia had been in the possession of France at the time of the signature of the Peace of Amiens, and no demand had then been made on behalf
- ↑ Lord Lansdowne to Morellet, August 20th, December 7th, 1802.
