This consideration seems to have occurred even to Charles IV.; he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma.

The re-establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains was doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exacting a heriot as East and West Florida.
From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three facts challenge our attention.

Both Bonaparte and Charles IV.

regarded the most fertile waste lands then calling for the plough as fairly exchanged against half a million of Tuscans; but the former feared the resentment of the United States, and sought to postpone a rupture until he could coerce them by overwhelming force.

It is equally clear that, had he succeeded in this enterprise, France might have gained a great colonial empire in North America protected from St.Domingo as a naval and military base, while that island would have doubly prospered from the vast supplies poured down the Mississippi; but this success he would have bought at the expense of a _rapprochement_ between the United States and their motherland, such as a bitter destiny was to postpone to the end of the century.
The prospect of an Anglo-American alliance might well give pause even to Napoleon.