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The Memorial reads in part as follows:^[2]

Citizen Minister

It is now twenty months since I presented for the first time the plan for my Nautilus to ex-Director La Reveillere Lepaux. He presented it to the Directory who ordered that it be forwarded to Minister of Marine Pléville, and finally it was turned down after five months of discussion.

Taken up again under the administration of Citizen Bruix, it had the same fate after about four months of waiting. A reception so little favorable on the part of the first magistrates of France, whose duty it is to encourage discoveries tending to spread liberty and to establish harmony among nations, proves to me that it was considered with a false idea of the physical as well as the moral effects of this machine.

Let us see first what would be for France the immediate effects of the Nautilus. The loss of the first English ship destroyed by extraordinary means would throw the English Government into utter embarrassment. It would realize that its whole navy could be destroyed by the same means, and by the same means it would be possible to blockade the Thames and to cut off the whole commerce of London. Under such circumstances what would the consternation be in England? How would Pitt then be able to support the allied powers? The result would be that deprived of Pitt’s guineas, the coalition would vanish and France thus delivered from its numerous enemies would be able to work without obstacle for the strengthening of its liberty and for peace.