“The veil which for some weeks past has covered the proceedings of the Cabinet with regard to neutral commerce is now so far withdrawn as to enable us to see with sufficient distinctness both the actors and the acting. The Ministers of Police and of the Interior (Fouché and Montalivet) have come out openly and vigorously against the present anti-commercial system, and have denounced it as ‘one originating in error and productive only of evil, and particularly calculated to impoverish France and enrich her enemy.’ While they have held this language in the Cabinet they have held one of nearly the same tenor out of it, and have added (we may suppose on sufficient authority) the most solemn assurances that the Emperor ‘never meant to do more than to prevent the commerce of the United States from becoming _tributary_ to Great Britain; that a new decision would soon be taken by him on this subject, and that from this the happiest results were to be expected.’” As though to prevent President Madison from showing undue elation at this announcement for the fiftieth time that the happiest results were to be expected from the future, Armstrong wrote another letter, four days afterward,[169] on the new confiscations and their cause. Frenchmen he said would reason thus: “There is a deficit of fifty millions in the receipts of last year. This must be supplied. Why not then put our hands into the pockets of your citizens once more, since, as you continue to be embroiled with Great Britain, we may do it with impunity.” Armstrong was angry, and could not analyze to the bottom the Emperor’s methods or motives. Thiers, in later years having the advantage of studying Napoleon’s papers, understood better the nature of his genius. “To admit false neutrals in order to confiscate them afterward, greatly pleased his astute (_rusé_) mind,” wrote the French historian and statesman,[170] “little scrupulous in the choice of means, especially in regard to shameless smugglers who violated at once the laws of their own country and those of the country that consented to admit them.” This description could not properly be applied to Americans, since they violated neither their own law nor that of France by coming to Amsterdam, San Sebastian, and Naples; but Thiers explained that the Emperor considered all Americans as smugglers, and that he wrote to the Prussian government: “Let the American ships enter your ports! Seize them afterward. You shall deliver the cargoes to me, and I will take them in part payment of the Prussian war-debt.”[171] Meanwhile the confiscation of American ships helped in no way the objects promised by Napoleon to Montalivet and Fouché. At a loss to invent a theory on which neutrals could be at the same time plundered and encouraged, the Emperor referred the subject to Champagny, January 10, in an interesting letter.[172] He called for a complete history of his relations with the United States since the