It now became eminently desirable that Napoleon should pay some attention to the domestic affairs of France and of the countries dominated by her. He determined to infuse a little of his own inexhaustible energy into the departments of State, and to restore public confidence generally. That some kind of mutual understanding should be arrived at with the Powers who were not under his thumb was a prime necessity. Affairs on the Continent were by no means without possibilities of danger to the Republic. Russia and Great Britain had become allies, the hitherto neutral scales of Prussia might at any moment lean towards the latter, and Austria had not become reconciled to the loss of her territories. When England set on foot proposals for a cessation of hostilities which had continued since 1793, Napoleon was busily preparing a flotilla for the invasion of that island, to which project he had devoted considerable thought. Although he did not betray his eagerness, he certainly felt that there could be no greater or more profitable blessing than a period of peace, which would enable him to carry out various reforms and also to consolidate his own interests. The negotiations finally took definite shape in the short-lived Treaty of Amiens. The British Government under the leadership of Addington lacked the genius and foresight of Pitt, consequently the balance of profit from the Treaty was on the side of France. The Egyptian question was to be settled by that country being restored to the Sultan; Malta was to be handed back to the Knights of St John, its former possessors; Great Britain was to retain Ceylon and Trinidad alone of her colonial conquests during the war. These were the principal items of the Treaty, the preliminaries of which were signed in London on the 1st October 1801. France was at peace with all the world. Napoleon, whose term of office as First Consul had been extended for ten years (at a later period he was made Consul for life), now directed the whole of his powers on the internal government of France. Neither afraid of God nor man personally, he early discerned that religion had a deep political significance. France had tried to blot out Christianity, but as a result of her efforts the old forms of worship had merely given place to vague speculations and makeshifts. The Christian faith was re-established by the Concordat, a “treaty of peace with the Roman Catholic Church,” as an eminent modern scholar terms it, the First Consul setting a good example by attending Mass at Notre Dame. This was followed by the inauguration of the Civil Code, a readjustment of laws involving the most arduous research on the part of those learned in the intricacies of jurisprudence.