The growing strength of Russia used in former times to be the natural subject of jealousy to the French Government, and they endeavoured to counterbalance these apprehensions by extending the protection of France to the two weaker neighbours of Russia, the Porte and the kingdom of Sweden, with which powers it had always been the policy of France to connect herself, and which connexion was not only honourable to that kingdom, but useful to Europe. But, at the treaty of Tilsit, and in Buonaparte's subsequent conduct relating to these powers, he lost sight of this national policy, or rather sacrificed it to his own personal objects. One of the most important private articles of the treaty of Tilsit seems to have provided, that Sweden should be despoiled of her provinces of Finland in favour of the Czar, and be thus, with the consent of Buonaparte, deprived of all effectual means of annoying Russia. A single glance at the map will show how completely the possession of Finland put a Swedish army, or the army of France as an ally of Sweden, within a short march of St. Petersburgh; and how, by consenting to Sweden's being stripped of that important province, Napoleon relinquished the grand advantage to be derived from it, in case of his ever being again obliged to contend with Russia upon Russian ground. Yet there can be no doubt, that at the treaty of Tilsit he became privy to the war which Russia shortly after waged against Sweden, in which Alexander deprived that ancient kingdom of her frontier province of Finland, and thereby obtained a covering territory of the last and most important consequence to his own capital. The Porte was no less made a sacrifice to the inordinate anxiety, which, at the treaty of Tilsit, Buonaparte seems to have entertained, for acquiring at any price the accession of Russia to his extravagant desire of destroying England. By the public treaty, indeed, some care seems to have been taken of the interests of Turkey, since it provides that Turkey was to have the benefit of peace under the mediation of France, and that Russia was to evacuate Moldavia and Wallachia, for the acquisition of which she was then waging an unprovoked war. But by the secret agreement of the two Emperors, it was unquestionably understood, that Turkey in Europe was to be placed at the mercy of Alexander, as forming naturally a part of the Russian Empire, as Spain, Portugal, and perhaps Great Britain, were, from local position, destined to become provinces of France. At the subsequent Congress betwixt the Emperors at Erfurt, their measures against the Porte were more fully adjusted.