however, the French armament triumphed--and, in the exultation of victory, the government at home had the extreme and seemingly purposeless ungenerosity, to publish an edict banishing all of the negro race from their European dominions.[44] But the yellow fever was already rapidly consuming the French army in St. Domingo; and its feeble remnant, under Rochambeau, having been at length expelled, in November, 1803, the independence of _Hayti_ was formally proclaimed on the 1st of January, 1804. The course of Napoleon's conduct, in and out of Europe, was calculated to fill all independent neighbours with new or aggravated suspicion; and in England, where public opinion possesses the largest means of making itself heard, and consequently the greatest power, the prevalence of such feelings became, from day to day, more marked. The British envoy's reclamation against the oppression of Switzerland, was but one of many drops, which were soon to cause the cup of bitterness to overflow. As in most quarrels, there was something both of right and of wrong on either side. When the English government remonstrated against any of those daring invasions of the rights of independent nations, or crafty enlargements, through diplomatic means, of the power of France, by which this period of peace was distinguished, the Chief Consul could always reply that the cabinet of St. James's, on their part, had not yet fulfilled one article of the treaty of Amiens, by placing Malta in the keeping of some power which had been neutral in the preceding war. The rejoinder was obvious: to wit, that Napoleon was every day taking measures wholly inconsistent with that balance of power which the treaty of Amiens contemplated. It is not to be denied that he, in his audaciously ambitious movements, had contrived to keep within the strict terms of the treaty: and it can as little be disputed that the English cabinet had _equity_ with them, although they violated the letter of the law, in their retention of the inheritance of the worthless and self-betrayed Knights of St. John.