Only a dull cynicism can deny this motive to the man who first unlocked the doors of Egyptian civilization; and it would be equally futile to deny to him the same beneficent aims with regard to the settlement of the plains of the Mississippi, and the coasts of New Holland.
The peculiarities of the condition of France furnished another powerful impulse towards colonization.

In the last decade her people had suffered from an excess of mental activity and nervous excitement.
From philosophical and political speculation they must be brought back to the practical and prosaic; and what influence could be so healthy as the turning up of new soil and other processes that satisfy the primitive instincts?
Some of these, it was true, were being met by the increasing peasant proprietary in France herself.

But this internal development, salutary as it was, could not appease the restless spirits of the towns or the ambition of the soldiery.

Foreign adventures and oceanic commerce alone could satisfy the Parisians and open up new careers for the Praetorian chiefs, whom the First Consul alone really feared.
Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone.

In a paper which Talleyrand read to the Institute of France in July, 1797, that far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon the pacifying influences exerted by foreign commerce and colonial settlements on a too introspective nation.