If she had expressed the least apprehension that I
wished to be declared your Landamann, I would have been so. It has
been said that England encouraged the last insurrection; if the
English cabinet had taken a single official step, or if there had
been a syllable said about it in the London Gazette, I would have
immediately united you with France." What incredible language! Thus,
the existence of a people who had secured their independence in the
midst of Europe by the most heroic efforts, and maintained it for
five centuries by wisdom and moderation, this existence would have
been annihilated by a movement of spleen which the least accident
might have excited in a being so capricious. Bonaparte added in this
same conference, that it was unpleasant to him to have a
constitution to make, because it exposed him to be hissed, which he
had no partiality for. This expression (etre siffle) bears the stamp
of the deceitfully affable vulgarity in which he frequently took
pleasure in indulging. Roederer and Desmeunier wrote the act of
mediation from his dictation, and the whole passed during the time
that his troops occupied Switzerland. He has since withdrawn them,
and this country, it must be confessed, has been better treated by
Napoleon than the rest of Europe, although both in a political and
military point of view more completely dependent upon him;
consequently it will remain tranquil in the general insurrection.
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