"If you doubt my desire to preserve peace, listen, and judge how far I am sincere. Though yet very young, I have attained a power, a renown to which it would be difficult to add. Do you imagine that I am solicitous to risk this power, this renown, in a desperate struggle? If I have a war with Austria, I shall contrive to find the way to Vienna. If I have a war with you, I will take from you every ally upon the Continent. You will blockade us; but I will blockade you in my turn. You will make the Continent a prison for us; but I will make the seas a prison for you. However, to conclude the war, there must be more direct efficiency. There must be assembled 150,000 men, and an immense flotilla. We must try to cross the Strait, and perhaps I shall bury in the depths of the sea my fortune, my glory, my life. It is an awful temerity, my lord, the invasion of England." Here, to the amazement of Lord Whitworth, Napoleon enumerated frankly and powerfully all the perils of the enterprise: the enormous preparations it would be necessary to make of ships, men, and munitions of war--the difficulty of eluding the English fleet. "The chance that we shall perish," said he, "is vastly greater than the chance that we shall succeed. Yet this temerity, my lord, awful as it is, I am determined to hazard, if you force me to it. I will risk my army and my life. With me that great enterprise will have chances which it can not have with any other. See now if I ought, prosperous, powerful, and peaceful as I now am, to risk power, prosperity, and peace in such an enterprise. Judge, if when I say I am desirous of peace, if I am not sincere. It is better for you; it is better for me to keep within the limits of treaties. You must evacuate Malta. You must not harbor my assassins in England. Let me be abused, if you please, by the English journals, but not by those miserable emigrants, who dishonor the protection you grant them, and whom the Alien Act permits you to expel from the country. Act cordially with me, and I promise you, on my part, an entire cordiality. See what power we should exercise over the world, if we could bring our two nations together. You have a navy, which, with the incessant efforts of ten years, in the employment of all my resources, I should not be able to equal. But I have 500,000 men ready to march, under my command, whithersoever I choose to lead them. If you are masters of the seas, I am master of the land. Let us then think of uniting, rather than of going to war, and we shall rule at pleasure the destinies of the world. France and England united, can do every thing for the interests of humanity."