The reason which determined him not to assume an _incognito_ name, as he might have resolved to do on leaving France, were these: First Magistrate for life of the Republic under the title of First Consul, he concluded the preliminaries of London, and the treaty of Amiens, with the King of Great Britain; and received, as ambassadors, Lord Cornwallis, Mr. Merry, and Lord Whitworth, who resided in that quality at his court. He accredited to the King of England Count Otto and General Andreossi, who resided as ambassadors at the court of Windsor. When, after an exchange of letters between the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the two Monarchies, Lord Lauderdale came to Paris invested with full powers from the King of England, he treated with the Plenipotentiaries possessing full powers from the Emperor Napoleon, and remained for several months at the court of the Thuilleries. When Lord Castlereagh afterwards signed, at Chatillon, the _ultimatum_, which the Allied Powers presented to the Plenipotentiaries of the Emperor Napoleon, he recognised by that the fourth dynasty. This _ultimatum_ was more advantageous than the treaty of Paris; but, in exacting that France should renounce Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, it exacted what was contrary to the propositions of Frankfort, and the proclamations of the Allied Powers--what was contrary to the oath, by which, at his coronation, the Emperor swore to maintain the integrity of the Empire. The Emperor, besides, thought that these natural limits were necessary, both for the security of France, and to preserve the equilibrium of Europe; he thought that the French nation, in the situation in which it was, ought rather to run the hazard of all the chances of war than to depart from that policy: France had obtained this integrity, and would have preserved it with honour, if treason had not arrayed itself in aid of the allies.
The Treaty of the 2d of August, and the Act of the British Parliament, called the Emperor Napoleon, Buonaparte, and gave him only the title of General. The title of General Buonaparte is doubtless eminently glorious; the Emperor bore it Lodi, at Castiglione, at Rivoli, at Arcole, at Leoben, at the Pyramids, at Aboukir: but for seventeen years he has borne that of First Consul and Emperor, which proves that he has been both First Magistrate of the Republic, and Sovereign of the fourth Dynasty. Those who think that nations are flocks which belong, of divine right, to certain families, do not belong to the age; nor do they participate in the spirit of the English legislature, which has several times changed the order of its Dynasty, because great changes had taken place in public opinion, in which the reigning Princes not participating, they became enemies to the welfare of the great majority of the nation: for kings are only hereditary Magistrates, who exist for the welfare of nations, and not nations for the satisfaction of Kings.