“I have been calculating,” he said, “year by year the downfall of the Government, and could not conceive it possible you could stand up another year. Whenever I took up a paper and saw the Committee of Ways and Means and read of your subsidies, I looked for a national bankruptcy in the course of the ensuing twelve months. But when Mr. Pitt came forward with the Income Tax, all the wise heads of this metropolis (Paris) gave you over as lost, and I pronounced you saved. When I saw the nation cheerfully submit to it, I was convinced you might carry on the war for fifty years.” He spoke of Mr. Pitt in terms which surprised me, and declared he believed in his conscience, if he had dared to execute to the full extent of what he thought, he would have succeeded in changing the face of Europe. “At all events,” said he, “it cannot be denied that he has the merit of having saved the old fabric (meaning the Constitution), if it be worth saving.” On my asking what he thought of the Peace and our present situation, he said that he saw nothing censurable in it, but had cut out plenty of work for the French which he was sure they would never finish. “If they do, woe betide you!” I asked for an explanation, and he replied, “If the French Government are intent on Peace they will set themselves seriously to work on their colonies; and such is the activity of the French that they will soon repair their losses, create a vast commerce, which their local possessions and influences will facilitate, and they will end with a powerful navy.” On my noticing that they had already excluded our commerce, he answered: “That will just give you an idea what a set of fools they are. This false step at the first start is a convincing proof they don’t know how to go to work. The prohibition of your manufactories has created an avidity for them. They should have opened a _free trade_ with you and gradually cozened away your industry and mechanics. But this Government is in such a confounded hurry that instead of sticking to any given point, it attempts five hundred different projects and only succeeds in one, enslaving the people!” He thought the Peace might be permanent if any change took place in the Government; but with Bonaparte at its head he was convinced it could not be of long duration. For the First Consul is essentially the creature of the army, and hungry generals and soldiers are hourly importuning him. Unless he could find them employment they would employ him. I asked if he thought Bonaparte secure. He replied: “Not more so than any of his predecessors; they are satisfied and grateful because he does not use the guillotine, but we have not yet got to the end of the third act of the Revolution. It is impossible to tell, but my guess is it will end either in the complete subjugation of Europe or in a bloody civil war between rival Generals, Republicans, Jacobins and Royalists, and bring back out of its confusion a Royal establishment.”