HISTORY OF EUROPE. 



163 



The main drift of this publication 

 £ Xfas to implicate Mr. Drake in a 

 participation in the plans of Georges 

 and his adherents, and that was at- 

 tempted to be proved by a distortion 

 of Mr. Drake's correspondence. 

 Not a syllable, however, appears in 

 any of the letters ascribed to him, to 

 justify such a construction. 



Copies of these papers were ad. 

 dressed to the several ministers from 

 foreign courts, residing at Paris, 

 ■with a circular note from M. Tal- 

 leyrand annexed. The answers to 

 which are conceived in general 

 terms of compliment to th'.' first con- 

 sul, with the exception of a few, of 

 which the writers, solely upon the 

 faith of the communication thus 

 made to them, ventured to repro- 

 bate, in the harshest terms, the con- 

 duct of Mr. Drake. Amongst the 

 latter the Danish minister, Mr. Dre- 

 yer, and the American minister, Mr, 

 Livingston, were the most conspi- 

 cuous*. 



The originals were forwarded to 

 Munich, and on the 31st of March, 

 a note was addressed to Mr. Drake, 

 by baron de Montgelas, the eleftor's 

 prime minister, wherein he ex- 

 presses the regret of his serene high- 

 ness, that his capital should have 

 been the central point of a corres- 

 pondence, so inconsistent with the 

 mission with which Mr. Drake was 

 invested at his court ; and that he 

 owes it to the dignity and welfare of 

 his subjects to declare, that from 

 that moment it became impossible 

 for him to have any communica- 

 tion with Mr. Drake, or to receive 

 him at his court. 



After the delivery of this note, it 



was impossible for Mr. Drake to de- 

 lay much longer his residence in the 

 Bavarian territories ; and Mr. Spen- 

 cer Smith t, British envoy to the 

 elector of Wurtemburg, who was 

 stated to have been concerned in 

 these transactions, was also under 

 the necessity of quitting Stutgard. 



The papers published with re- 

 spect to the above transaction, had 

 been so widely distributed, and been 

 so generally read, throughout Eu- 

 rope, that it became necessary that 

 some notice should be taken of them 

 by the British government. Ac- 

 cordingly, a circular letter on this 

 subjeft was addressed to each of the 

 foreign ministers, resident at the 

 couft of London, by lord Hawkes- 

 bury, his majesty's principal secre- 

 tary of state for foreign afl'airs. 



In this letter lord Hawkeshury 

 repels the charge of the king's go- 

 vernmeat being parties to any pro- 

 ject of assassination, whilst he main- 

 tains the right of all belligerent 

 powers, to avail themselves of any 

 discontents existing in the countries 

 with which they may be at war. And 

 that this principlewas to be acted upon 

 with peculiar propriety, at a time 

 when all Eu rope felt an anxious desire 

 to see re-established in France an 

 order of things more consistent with 

 its own happiness, and with the se- 

 curity of surrounding nations. That 

 this principle, were it under any 

 circumstances doubtful, was, in the 

 present case, most fully sanctioned, 

 not only by the actual state of the 

 French nation, but by the conduct 

 of the government of that country, 

 which, ever since the commencement 

 of the present war, had maintained a 



* Vide the whole of these answers, and M. Tnllcyrand's note. State Papers, p. CSO. 



t Vide die 2d report of the grand judge, dated the Itth Afffil ; coiitainine; the 



^aottiOHof sitiien Rwaw^'s missiou to Mr. t)rak« aad Mr. Smttb. Stale Paper8,p. 623. 



M 2 «om. 



