As every step of the First Consul indicated a desire to embarrass English commerce, it was impossible that friendly relations could be long maintained between France and England. Under the pretext of a renewal of arrangements formerly subsisting between the two countries, Napoleon despatched to England a number of agents whose ostensible occupation was to watch over the interests of French trade and navigation, their real business and most important commission being to make inquiries into the commercial value of each port; the course of exchange; the state of the neighbouring manufactures and fairs; together with every detail necessary for establishing a rivalry in trade. These in themselves were legitimate and perhaps not unfriendly objects, but each agent was further required “to furnish a plan of the ports of his district,” with “a specification of the soundings for mooring vessels.” If no plan could be procured, then he was enjoined to point out, “with what wind vessels could come in and go out, and what was the greatest draught of water with which they could enter therein deeply laden.” From the earliest moment of his assumption of power Napoleon had conceived the idea that England, “a mere nation of shopkeepers,” could be most effectually injured by directing his hostility against her trade, and certain it is that, with unintermitting pertinacity, he tried to carry out this design. It happened, however, that military men and engineers were selected to act as “commercial agents,” the two most able and active of whom having actually commenced their duties in Guernsey and Dublin, while others arrived in London to receive final instructions from leaders who had been recognised by Lord Hawkesbury, the English Commissary-general of the commercial relations with the French republic in London. The English government could hardly fail to notice these suspicious circumstances, revealing as they did but too plainly the object of these pseudo-commercial agents. Lord Hawkesbury consequently made a verbal representation to the French ambassador of the facts; but his reply was so flimsy and unsatisfactory, that the French agents were detained in London, with a further intimation that if they left it they would at once receive orders to quit the country. [Sidenote: Aggrandisement of Bonaparte.] [Sidenote: Irritation in England.]