It is unnecessary to recapitulate at length the various acts by which Bonaparte, during a presumed period of peace, endeavoured to aggrandise his power. Suffice it to say that he despatched an enormous military force to the island of San Domingo with a view of placing the colonial power of France in the West Indies on a level with that of Great Britain: an expedition which, however, proved most disastrous, many thousands of his soldiers finding their graves in a climate singularly dangerous to European constitutions.[253] But when Bonaparte sent Ney with thirty thousand men “to give,” in the phraseology of the day, “a constitution” to Switzerland, the war party in England roused the entire nation to energetic action, and, though the public language of ministers still breathed a spirit of peace, it was resolved that effectual steps should be taken to curb Napoleon’s further progress. Italy, Holland, and Liguria (as the Genoese republic was called at that time) had fallen under his iron rule. Spain he had likewise overawed, while exercising a predominating influence over Austria, whose power he had humbled; and, in the opinion of the French people, the insular position of England alone “prevented her from being absorbed into a French province,” thus sinking beneath the domineering power of the French Dictator. The very thought of such humiliating conditions was totally incompatible with the independent spirit of Englishmen. The newspaper press, though at that time swayed by a spirit of party, yet still free, sounded the alarm, and attacked the ruler of France with an undaunted spirit, which Bonaparte could not endure. He lost all temper when complaining of the unmistakable opinions expressed of his conduct and intentions by the English press; though the too complaisant English ministers prosecuted the offending parties.[254] In the midst of this excitement the question of the surrender of Malta arose, only to intensify the suspicions of the English people, the more so as Bonaparte was making prodigious preparations of a military and naval character in Holland. [Sidenote: Bonaparte’s interview with Lord Whitworth.]