But its conditions were not such as to satisfy the British, who gave up all their conquests but Trinidad and Ceylon, restored the Cape to Holland, with the condition that it should be a free port, and agreed that Malta was to go back to the Knights of St. John, under the guarantee of one of the Great Powers. France also made sacrifices and withdrew claims, but to the British nation these did not appear to balance those made by their own Government. Buonaparte had no intention of allowing the peace to be more than a truce. Among other objects he had in view, he recovered his veterans from their confinement in English prisons, and he never paused in his ambitious schemes. He strove to increase French influence in Switzerland, Holland, and Italy. Under the name of consuls he sent agents to England and Ireland, their real object being to make themselves acquainted with the resources of those countries and the chance of their successful invasion. Egypt had been restored to the Porte by the Treaty, but instead of evacuating that country, the First Consul was utilising his position there to equip a fresh army. In the face of these proceedings Britain did not withdraw her troops from Egypt, nor did she evacuate Malta, which she should have done in fulfilment of the Article which restored that island to the Knights of St. John. Angry disputes arose over her action, or rather want of action, in this matter. Commenting on the Treaty of Amiens, Count Guillaume de Garden {245} writes: “L’article est le plus important de tout le Traité, mais aucune des conditions qu’il renferme n’a été exécutée et il est devenu le prétexte d’une guerre, qui s’est renouvelée en 1803 et a duré sans interruption jusqu’en 1814.” The complaint of the First Consul against the English Press, and his demands that Britain should alter her laws, putting restraints on the liberty of the Press, and depriving of their freedom those living under her protection, roused the indignation of the country. The British Government prosecuted under her own laws a Frenchman, M. Peltier, who in articles he had written had brought himself within the arm of the law of the land, but it refused to alter those laws at the bidding of another power. M. Norvus, Napoleon’s apologist, wrote: “Napoleon demanded from Great Britain what was nearly the same thing as proposing the sacrifice of its constitution, and to insist upon its abandoning the two pillars of its freedom, the liberty of the press, and the privilege of Habeas Corpus.”