Towards three o’clock, the Emperor came into my room again. He found my son and myself engaged in comparing and looking over the account of the Battle of Arcole. He knew that it was my favourite chapter, and that I called it a canto of the Iliad. He wished to read it again, and expressed himself also pleased with it.
The perusal of this account of Arcole awakened the Emperor’s ideas respecting what he called “that beautiful theatre, Italy.” He ordered us to follow him into the drawing-room, where he dictated to us for several hours. He had caused his immense map of Italy, which covered the greatest part of the drawing-room, to be spread open on the floor, and having laid himself down upon it, he went over it on his hands and his knees, with a compass and a red pencil in his hand, comparing and measuring the distance with a long piece of string, of which one of us held one of the ends. “It is thus,” said he to me, laughing at the posture in which I saw him, “that a country should be measured in order to form a correct idea of it, and lay down a good plan of a campaign.”
THE CELEBRATED BILLS OF ST. DOMINGO.—INSPECTORS OF THE REVIEWS, &C.—PLANS OF ADMINISTRATION, &C.—GAUDIN, MOLLIEN, DEFERMONT, LACUEE, &C.—MINISTER OF THE TREASURY.—MINISTER SECRETARY OF STATE.—IMPORTANCE OF THEIR FUNCTIONS.
21st.—Admiral Malcolm called upon me to-day. He came to take leave of us all; he was to sail the next day for the Cape, and would be two months absent.
We are sorry to lose the Admiral; his manners, always polite, and a kind of tacit sympathy existing between us, contrast him continually in our mind with Sir Hudson Lowe, who is so unlike him.
The Admiral had seen the Emperor, who is also partial to him. They had taken together some turns in the garden, and the Admiral told me had collected some excellent information respecting the Scheldt and the Nievendip, a maritime establishment in Holland which was entirely unknown to him, and which was founded by Napoleon.
After dinner, the conversation turned upon what the Emperor termed the celebrated bills of St. Domingo. It gave rise to the following curious details.—“The administrator of St. Domingo,” said the Emperor, “took it into his head one day to draw from the Cape, without authority, for the sum of sixty millions, in bills, on the treasury in Paris, which bills were all payable on the same day. France was not then, and had, perhaps, never been, rich enough to meet such a demand. Besides, where and by what means had the administration of St. Domingo acquired such a credit? The First Consul could not command any thing like it in Paris; it was as much as M. Necker could have done at the time of his greatest popularity. Be that as it may, when these bills appeared in Paris, where they arrived before the letters of advice, the First Consul was applied to from the treasury, to point out what was to be done. ‘Wait for the letters of advice,’ said he, ‘in order to learn the nature of the transaction. The treasury is like a capitalist; it possesses the same rights, and should follow the same course. These bills are not accepted, they are, consequently, not payable.’ However, the necessary information, and the vouchers, arrived. These bills stated value received, but the receipts of the officers in charge of the chest, into whose hands the money had been paid, were for only one tenth, one fifth, one third of the amount of the respective bills. The treasury, therefore, would only acknowledge and refund the sum really and bona fide paid; and the bills in their tenour were declared to be false. This raised a great clamour, and produced a terrible agitation amongst the merchants. A deputation waited upon the First Consul, who, far from endeavouring to avoid it, opened the business at once, and asked ‘whether they took him for a child, whether they thought he would sport thus with the purest blood of the people, or that he was so indifferent a guardian of the public interest? What he refused to give up,’ he said, ‘did not affect him personally, did not trench upon his civil list, but it was public property, of which he was the guardian, and which was the more sacred in his eyes on that account.’ Then, addressing the two persons at the head of the deputation, he said: ‘You, gentlemen, who are merchants, bankers, men of business, give me a positive answer. If one of your agents abroad were to draw upon you for very large sums contrary to your expectations and to your interests, would you accept, would you pay his bills?’ They were obliged to admit they would not. ‘Then,’ said the First Consul, ‘you, who are simple proprietors, and in the right of your majority responsible for your own actions only, you would wish to possess a right which you refuse to allow to me, proprietor in the name of all, and who am in that quality always a minor and subject to revision! No, gentlemen, I shall enjoy your privileges in the name and for the benefit of all; the actual amount received for your bills shall be repaid you and no more. I do not ask the merchants to take the bills of my agents: it is an honour, a mark of credit, to which I do not aspire; if the merchants do take them, it must be at their own risk and peril; I only acknowledge and consider as sacred the acceptance of my Minister of the Treasury.’ Upon this they again expostulated, and a great deal of idle talk ensued. They should be obliged, they said, to declare themselves bankrupts; they had received these bills, for ready money; their agents abroad had committed the error of taking them, through respect for, and confidence in, the government. ‘Very well,’ said the First Consul, ‘become bankrupts. But they did not,’ observed the Emperor, ‘they had not received these bills for ready money, and their agents had not committed any error.’
“The members of the deputation left the First Consul, convinced in their own minds of the validity of his reasons; nevertheless, they filled Paris with their clamours and with falsehoods, misrepresenting the affair altogether.
“This transaction,” said the Emperor, “and its details, explain many other transactions which have been much spoken of in Paris under the Imperial administration.
“The commercial world had particularly said, and repeated, that this proceeding was unexampled; that such a violation of credit was a thing hitherto unheard of; but to that the First Consul replied that he would set the question at rest by quoting precedents, and he recalled to their minds the Bills of Louis XIV., the liquidations of the Regent, the Mississippi Company,[Company,] the liquidations of the wars of 1763 and of 1782, &c.; and proved to them that what they contended to be a thing unexampled had been the constant practice of the monarchy.”