favour, and they may be expected to draw to themselves the readers. whose confidence has been abused by their weaker contemporaries. Both parties to the deceit will then be placed in the position of actors playing to an empty house. So far as the advertiser is concerned he is already doing that to a degree which he probably does not suspect. If one half the ingenuity and industry that are bestowed upon this poor game of trick advertising were brought to bear in the shape of searching investigation into the real value of the different newspapers for advertising purposes, and especially for advertisements addressed to particular classes, the advertiser himself would save a vast amount of misplaced money. The extent to which costly advertisements are given to papers absolutely worthless for their purpose is astounding. Sometimes it is due to force of habit and total ignorance of the changes which time and competition effect in the relative value of different papers, as in the notorious case of the torpid firms of publishers who, having forty years ago been drawn to advertise freely. in a then first-rate provincial morning paper, continued to send their announcements for years after it had become third-rate, and even down to the point of its inglorious death-steadfastly refusing all the while to give their confidence to the great journals that had superseded it. Speaking generally, the better class of advertising agents are quite competent to take care of the interests of their clients in these respects, and traders with money to spend on advertising cannot do better than place themselves in the hands of reputable firms who have proved by results their title to confidence. The waste of money spent on advertising arises chiefly in two cases-first, that of the knowing person who arms himself with a newspaper directory, or a select list of newspapers bequeathed to him by an ancestor, and flatters himself that he will save something by becoming his own agent ; and secondly, that of the man in a hurry who is tripped up and secured by the first adventurer claiming to be an advertising agent he meets. 'Agents' of this latter type are increasing. Their chief care is to discover, not the journals which afford the largest publicity, but those out of which they can make the largest 'pie' in commission.

The advertising agent has, in turn, some reason to complain of recent encroachments upon his province, and, in the interests of journalism and of advertisers alike, he is entitled to support in resisting them. One great news agency upon which the British Press universally relies for its chief supplies of general news has always steadily declined to ally itself with the business of advertising in any shape, and nobody can doubt the wisdom of that policy. There are, however, news agencies which associate the distribution of advertisements with their primary business as news collectors and vendors, and while it is undoubtedly quite possible to preserve a clear distinction between the two functions, the system is manifestly liable to abuse. Beyond that proposition it is not necessary to go. Thẹ

dual obligation of the Press to the public on the one hand and to the advertiser on the other is so delicate in its poise that it is exceedingly undesirable that any business method calculated to disturb it should be employed. The responsibility of the advertising agent to his client is as well defined as that of the newspaper to its readers, and the safeguard of both is perfect freedom of action on either side. The sale and purchase of news as between the two throws a cross interest athwart the relationship and tends to impair the independence of both.

H. J. PALMER.

NAPOLEON ON HIMSELF

SOME unpublished memoranda relating to the great Napoleon after his final downfall in 1815 have come into my possession. They consist of notes made by Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who had charge of the Emperor at St. Helena before the arrival of Sir Hudson Lowe. While no Englishman could be a persona grata to Napoleon, we find from a variety of authentic sources that at least he regarded Cockburn as a gentleman and entitled to respect, while he always spoke with unmeasured bitterness of his successor.

Cockburn's reminiscences or records are apparently in the form of a confidential letter or despatch, and are dated the 22nd of October, 1815. They have not been published by Las-Cases, Montholon, O'Meara, or any of the biographers of Bonaparte, and on some important points in Napoleon's career they put an entirely different interpretation from all the hitherto accepted versions. Take first the expedition to Egypt. It is stated by all writers that the French Directory, fearing Napoleon's ambition, thought they could only keep him quiet by employing him, and gave him command of the so-called Army of England. But,' to quote one of his latest biographers, who only sums up the opinions of most historians, he was bent on the conquest of Egypt. He appears to have had something visionary in his temperament, and to have dreamed of founding a mighty empire from the standpoint of the East, the glow and glamour of which seem always to have had a certain fascination for him. He therefore employed the resources of the Army of England to prepare for an expedition to Egypt, and the Directory yielded to his wishes, partly no doubt through the desire of getting him away from France.'

This view is entirely wrong. In his conversations with Cockburn Napoleon admitted that the Directory wanted to get him out of France, but he distinctly assured Sir George that the expedition to Egypt did not originate with himself, as generally supposed. But when the proposition to go to Egypt was placed before him, he warmly entered into it, for he was as anxious to get away from the Directory as they

were to be rid of him, and he calculated upon returning with increased popularity whenever he might deem the crisis favourable.

Sir George Cockburn thus continues his narrative:

Napoleon said that, having left France with these ideas, he was anxiously looking for the events which brought him back even before they happened, and on his return to France he was soon well assured that there no longer existed in it a party strong enough to oppose him. He therefore immediately planned the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, and though he might, he said, on that day have run some little personal risk owing to the general confusion, yet everything was so arranged that it could not possibly have failed. The government of France from that day (the 7th of November 1799) became inevitably and irretrievably in his hands and those of his adherents. Therefore, Napoleon added, all the stories which I might have heard of an intention to arrest him at that time, and of opposing his plans, were all nonsense and without any foundation in truth, for his plans had been too long and too carefully laid to admit of being so counteracted. After he became First Consul, he said, plots and conspiracies against his life had, however, been very frequent, but by vigilance and some good fortune they had all been discovered and frustrated.

New and most interesting details are furnished by Cockburn, on Bonaparte's authority. With reference to the famous plot by Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal, Napoleon said that this plot was the nearest proving fatal to him of any, and he implicated Moreau in it, though this great general was convicted and banished on insufficient evidence.

Napoleon (continues Sir George Cockburn) said that thirty-six of the conspirators had been actually in Paris six weeks without the police knowing anything of the plot, and it was at last discovered by means of an emigrant apothecary, who had been informed against and secured after landing from an English man-of-war. The police at length having entertained some suspicions in consequence of the numbers of persons reported to have been clandestinely landed about the same time, it was judged the apothecary would be a likely person to bring to confession if properly managed. Therefore, being condemned to death, and every preparation made for his execution, his life was offered him if he would give any intelligence sufficiently important to merit such indulgence. He immediately caught at the offer, and gave the names of the thirty-six persons before mentioned, every one of whom, with Pichegru and Georges, were, owing to the vigorous measures at once adopted, found and secured in Paris within a fortnight. Napoleon added that previous to this plot being discovered it would probably have proved fatal to him had not Georges insisted upon being appointed a consul, which Moreau and Pichegru would not hear of, and therefore Georges and his party could not be brought to act.

Napoleon likewise defended himself to Cockburn on the subject of the execution of the Duc d'Enghien. It will be remembered that this unfortunate prince of the House of Bourbon was charged with being concerned in the plot of Pichegru and Cadoudal immediately it was discovered, and that Napoleon unscrupulously resolved to seize the person of the Duke. Accordingly, on the night of the 14th of March 1804 the neutral territory of Baden was violated, and the Duke, with two attendants, was captured and carried prisoner to Strasburg, and

thence to Paris and Vincennes. On the early morning of the 20th of March he was tried before a military commission consisting of eight officers, and after a five hours' examination was condemned to death. Soon afterwards he was shot in the castle moat, and buried in the grave already dug for him. After the Restoration his bones were taken up and re-interred in the chapel of the Castle of Vincennes. This wantonly cruel and criminal act fixed a deep stigma on the character of Bonaparte. The records of the trial were published by M. Dupin, who showed the illegality of the proceedings of the military commission-an illegality which was publicly acknowledged by General Hulin, the president of the court. Thiers has endeavoured to exculpate Bonaparte, but Lanfrey took a strongly adverse view, while some historians have fixed most of the guilt on Talleyrand. Fouché, who was a very pretty villain in his own way, described the execution of the Duke as worse than a crime-it was a blunder.

In his conversations with Sir George Cockburn, Napoleon asserted that it was to be at hand for the purpose of aiding in the Pichegru conspiracy, and to take advantage of any confusion it might produce, that the Duc d'Enghien took up his residence in the neighbourhood of Strasburg, in which town he (Bonaparte) maintained that he had certain information of the Duke having been in disguise several times. Cockburn asked the Emperor whether there was any truth in the report that he had sent an order for the Duke's reprieve, but that it had unfortunately arrived too late. Bonaparte replied that it was certainly not true, for the Duke was condemned for having conspired against France, and he (the Emperor) was determined from the first to let the law take its course respecting him, in order if possible to check these frequent conspiracies. In answer to a remonstrance from Sir George against his having taken the Duke from the neutral territories of the Duke of Baden, Napoleon said that this did not, in his opinion, at all alter the case between France and the Duc d'Enghien; that the Duke of Baden might certainly have some reason to complain of the violation of his territory, but that was an affair for him to settle with the Duke of Baden, and not with the Duc d'Enghien. He maintained that when they had got the latter within the territory of France-no matter how-they had full right to try and punish him for any act committed by him in France against the existing government.

Those three little words, 'no matter how,' vitiate the whole of Napoleon's argument. They cut at the root of all right of asylum in neutral states, and such miserable special pleading will be of no avail at the bar of history. Well might Sir George Cockburn exclaim-Thus does this man reason who now exclaims so violently against the legality of our conduct in refusing to receive him in England, and sending him to reside in St. Helena.' No, the execution of the Duc d'Enghien must remain a dark blot upon Napoleon's