the maritime conquests she had made, with the exception of those parts of India which she had definitively acquired, embracing Ceylon, captured from the Dutch, and Trinidad, wrested from the Spaniards. She proposed, however, to restore the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo and Surinam to the Dutch; Martinique to the French; Minorca to the Spaniards; and to assign Malta to the still surviving members of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. England also evacuated Porto Ferrajo, which, with the island of Elba, was to be given back to the French. As an equivalent, the French were to evacuate the territory of Naples, that is, the gulf of Otranto, and Egypt, which France has ever been anxious to obtain, was restored to the Porte.
The preliminaries of this important treaty were signed on the night of the 1st of October, and a courier was despatched to Paris, with a view to make the public announcement simultaneously to the people on both sides of the Channel. The public joy both in France and England was of the most exciting character, as the negotiations, which had been carried on during nine months, had been kept profoundly secret up to the last moment. Napoleon and his colleagues, the other two consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun, received the news at a cabinet council, and they embraced each other with undisguised delight. In this moment of satisfaction Cambacérès remarked, "Now that we have made peace with England, we have only to conclude a treaty of commerce, and all cause for future dissension between the two countries will be removed."
"Not quite so fast," rejoined the First Consul, with
