If our Ministers believed that Bonaparte feared the displeasure of Austria, they were completely in error.

Thanks to the utter weakness of the European system, and the rivalry of Austria and Prussia, he was now able to concentrate his ever-increasing power and prestige on the negotiations at Amiens, which once more claim our attention.
Far from being sated by the prestige gained at Lyons, he seemed to grow more exacting with victory.

Moreover, he had been cut to the quick by some foolish articles of a French _emigre_ named Peltier, in a paper published at London: instead of treating them with the contempt they deserved, he magnified these ravings of a disappointed exile into an event of high policy, and fulminated against the Government which allowed them.

In vain did Cornwallis object that the Addington Cabinet could not venture on the unpopular act of curbing freedom of the Press in Great Britain.

The First Consul, who had experienced no such difficulty in France, persisted now, as a year later, in considering every uncomplimentary reference to himself as an indirect and semiofficial attack.
To these causes we may attribute the French demands of February 4th: contradicting his earlier proposal for a temporary Neapolitan garrison of Malta, Bonaparte now absolutely refused either to grant that necessary protection to the weak Order of St.John, or to join Great Britain in an equal share of the expenses--L20,000 a year--which such a garrison would entail.