The accession of strength which this treaty, and the manifest personal partiality of Alexander, gave to the French emperor, inspired him perhaps with the idea, that the English cabinet would, if a fair occasion offered, gladly enter into negotiations for a general peace. The two emperors wrote a joint letter to the king of England. “The circumstances of Europe had,” they said, “brought them together; their first thought was to yield to the wish and the wants of every people, and to seek, in a speedy pacification, the most efficacious remedy for the miseries which oppressed all nations. The long and bloody war which had torn the continent was at an end, without the possibility of being renewed. Many changes had taken place in Europe, many states had been overthrown; the cause was to be found in the state of agitation and misery in which the stagnation of maritime commerce had placed the greatest nations: still greater changes might yet take place, and all of them contrary to the policy of the English nation. Peace, then, was, at once, the interest of the people of the continent, as it was the interest of the people of Great Britain. We entreat your majesty,” they concluded, “we unite to entreat your majesty to listen to the voice of humanity, to silence that of the passions; to seek, with the intention of arriving at that object, to conciliate all interests, and thus preserve all powers which exist, ensure the happiness of Europe and of this generation, at the head of which Providence has placed us.” To this joint letter Mr. Canning replied by two letters to the French and Russian ministers, accompanied by an official note. In that addressed to the Russian, he observed, that “however desirous the king might be to reply personally to the emperor, he was prevented, by the unusual mode of communication adopted, which had deprived it of a private and personal character. It was impossible to pay that mark of respect to the emperor, without at the same time acknowledging titles which he had never acknowledged. The proposition for peace would be communicated to Sweden, and to the existing government of Spain. It was necessary that his majesty should receive an immediate assurance, that France acknowledged the government of Spain as a party to the negotiation. That such was the intention of the emperor could not be doubted, when the lively interest manifested by his imperial majesty for the welfare and dignity of the Spanish monarchy was recollected. No other assurance was wanted, that the emperor could not have been induced to sanction by his concurrence or approbation, usurpations, the principles of which were not less unjust than their example was dangerous to all legitimate sovereigns.”