The other stipulations of this extraordinary treaty divided a portion of revenue secured to Napoleon among the members of his family. The most rational was that which settled upon Maria Louisa and her son the duchies of Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla, in full sovereignty. Except this, all the other stipulations were to be made good at the expense of France, whose Provisional Government were never consulted upon the terms granted.[49]
It was not till the bad effects of this singular treaty had been experienced, that men inquired why and on what principle it was first conceded. A great personage has been mentioned as its original author. Possessed of many good and highly honourable qualities, and a steady and most important member of the great European confederacy, it is doing the memory of the Emperor Alexander no injury to suppose, that he remembered his education under his French tutor La Harpe, and was not altogether free from its effects. With these there always mingles that sort of showy sensibility which delights in making theatrical scenes out of acts of beneficence, and enjoying in full draughts the popular applause which they are calculated to excite. The contagious air of Paris--the shouts--the flattery--the success to a point hitherto unhoped for--the wish to drown unkindness of every sort, and to spread a feast from which no one should rise discontented--the desire to sum up all in one word, to show MAGNANIMITY in the hour of success, seems to have laid Alexander's heart more open than the rules of wisdom or of prudence ought to have permitted. It is generous to give, and more generous to pardon; but to bestow favours and forgiveness at the same moment, to secure the future fortune of a rival who lies prostrate at his feet, to hear thanks and compliments on every hand, and from the mouths even of the vanquished, is the most fascinating triumph of a victorious sovereign. It is only the consequences which teach him how thriftless and unprofitable a prodigality of beneficence often proves, and that in the attempt so to conduct great national measures that they shall please and satisfy every one, he must necessarily encroach on the rules both of justice and wisdom, and may occasion, by a thoughtless indulgence of romantic sensibility, new trains of misfortune to the whole civilized world. The other active parties in the treaty were the King of Prussia, who had no motive to scan with peculiar scrutiny a treaty planned by his ally the Emperor Alexander, and the Emperor of Austria, who could not in delicacy object to stipulations in favour of his son-in-law.
