I recollect that about
the time the complaints were made respecting the _Minerva_
(newspaper), Colonel Burr, formerly vice-president of the United
States, who had recently arrived at Altona, was pointed out to me as a
dangerous man, and I received orders to watch him very closely, and to
arrest him on the slightest ground of suspicion if he should come to
Hamburgh. Colonel Burr was one of those in favour of whom I ventured
to disobey the orders I received from the restless police of Paris. As
soon as the minister of the police heard of his arrival at Altona, he
directed me to adopt towards him those violent measures which are
equivalent to persecution. In answer to these instructions, I stated
that Colonel Burr conducted himself at Altona with much prudence and
propriety; that he kept but little company, and that he was scarcely
spoken of. Far from regarding him as a man who required watching;
having learned that he wished to go to Paris, I caused a passport to
be procured for him, which he was to receive at Frankfort; and I never
heard that this dangerous citizen had compromised the safety of the
state in any way." _Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon,_ vol. iv., p.
108.
In his journal of November 24, Burr writes:--
"I learn that A. B. is announced in the Paris papers in a manner no
way auspicious. Resolved to go direct to the French minister, to see
if he had any orders to give or refuse me passports.
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