“I am sorry to tell you,” Mr. Nicholas writes, under date of May 30th, 1807, “that we this moment receive the intelligence of Dantzig being in possession of the French on the 26th inst.... Such letters for that place as I may receive from you before this letter reaches you, I shall keep in my office until I receive your directions, as the French will at first look after all letters to discover British property.... I have made many inquiries how English letters sent under cover to merchants of this town addressed to Austria and Italy have gone. A banker of this place, Messrs. Israel and Dehn, assures me that they forward at least 50 to 200 a week, which he receives under cover from England, and that he has as yet never known one miscarry, nor heard of their being opened. I readily believe this, as to judge from the general conduct of the persons employed, their only object is to make money.... I am convinced that the mercantile correspondence is not interrupted in the least, and that the revenue alone suffers, as from what I saw in Husum, the practice of the merchants is to write on a very thin paper and put their letters under one cover. I observed some instances of this nature where certainly 30 or 40 letters were enclosed, and the postage charged was not the amount which ought to have been paid for five single letters.” Mr. Nicholas was firmly persuaded that the patriotism of the Duke of Berg’s (Murat’s) agents in Hamburg was so far qualified by respect for the Post-Office revenues which they had seized as to leave them open to a bargain. He accordingly approached them secretly, and found them quite disposed to treat. The Duke’s Postmaster pledged himself that the letters should go safely; that they never had been, and never would be, opened; while Mr. Nicholas, who strongly urged the conclusion of this bargain, was persuaded that the greed of the Berg officials was an excellent pledge of their good faith. Bourrienne, who, in addition to his other functions, was the Duke of Berg’s agent in Hamburg, has nothing to say about this negotiation, so strangely opposite to the policy of Napoleon that one might call it traitorous if one did not acknowledge that the base motive of pecuniary interest may have been mingled with a more honourable desire to avoid the total commercial ruin of the countries which the Continental System was crushing into bankruptcy.