Minister to Tuscany.

When, in the summer of 1799, Talleyrand was forced by the Jacobins to
resign his place as a Minister of the Foreign Department, he had the
adroitness to procure Rheinhard to be nominated his successor, so that,
though no longer nominally the Minister, he still continued to influence
the decisions of our Government as much as if still in office, because,
though not without parts, Rheinhard has neither energy of character nor
consistency of conduct. He is so much accustomed, and wants so much to
be governed, that in 1796, at Hamburg, even the then emigrants, Madame de
Genlis and General Valence, directed him, when he was not ruled or
dictated to by his wife or brother-in-law.

In 1800 Bonaparte sent him as a representative to the Helvetian Republic,
and in 1802, again to Hamburg, where he was last winter superseded by
Bourrienne, and ordered to an inferior station at the: Electoral Court at
Dresden. Rheinhard will never become one of those daring diplomatic
banditti whom revolutionary Governments always employ in preference. He
has some moral principles, and, though not religious, is rather
scrupulous. He would certainly sooner resign than undertake to remove by
poison, or by the steel of a bravo, a rival of his own or a person
obnoxious to his employers. He would never, indeed, betray the secrets
of his Government if he understood they intended to rob a despatch or to
atop a messenger; but no allurements whatever would induce him to head
the parties perpetrating these acts of our modern diplomacy.

Our present Minister at Hamburg (Bourrienne) is far from being so nice. A
revolutionist from the beginning of the Revolution, he shared, with the
partisans of La Fayette, imprisonment under Robespierre, and escaped
death only by emigration. Recalled afterwards by his friend, the late