The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Editor's Preface, By Harald Westergaard
• Author's Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Antecedents of the Continental System
• Foreword
• Chapter I.: Commercial Policy
• Chapter II.: Maritime Blockade
• Chapter III.: Continental Blockade
• Chapter IV.: Economic Position of Great Britain
• Part II.
• Chapter I.
• Chapter II.
• Chapter III.
• Chapter IV.
• Chapter V.
• Part III.
• Chapter I.
• Chapter II.
• Chapter III.: Smuggling and Corruption; Fiscalism and Licensing
• Chapter IV.: The Trianon and Fontainebleau Policy In Operation (1810-12)
• Chapter V.: The British Crisis of 1810-12
• Chapter VI.: Self-destruction of the System
• Part IV: Effects of the Continental System On the Economic Life of Great Gritain and the Mainland
• Chapter I.: Different Types of Effect
• Chapter II.: Effects On France
• Chapter III.: Effects On the Rest of the Continent
• Chapter IV.: Effects On the United Kingdom
• Conclusion Comparison With the Present Day
• Bibliographical Note
• Appendices
• Appendix I. The British Orders In Council, 180759
• Appendix Ii French Customs Duties On Colonial Produce

PART III.

INTERNAL HISTORY AND WORKING OF THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM

CHAPTER I.

TREATMENT OF CONFISCATED GOODS

THE task that Napoleon made the central point of his policy manifestly imposed the greatest demands on its inventor and his helpers, especially when we take into consideration the administrative powers at the disposal of the governments of the time.

With regard to what was by far the most important point, namely, the exclusion of British and colonial goods, the question of the application of the system at once struck upon a peculiar difficulty, namely, the problem of what to do with the confiscated merchandise. To Napoleon himself, strange as it may seem, this problem was a matter of minor importance, inasmuch as from first to last he adhered to the view taken over from the politicians of the Convention, that all goods were sold on the credit of Englishmen and thus were not yet paid for when they were seized, and that, accordingly, the loss in any case hit the enemy. With a persistence that never wavered he preached to his allies and helpers the doctrines that, 'inasmuch as the (continental) merchants never buy except on credit, it is a fact that no goods are ever paid for,' and that, 'all goods being the property of the English,' their confiscation means 'a backhanded blow for England which is terrific'.1 On this assumption, moreover, the whole difficulty would pretty soon have been overcome; for after a sufficiently large number of such losses had been inflicted on the English they might reasonably be expected to grow weary of sacrificing their goods and thus abandon the attempt to force them on the Continent. It is true that not even under Napoleon's assumption did it do to allow goods, at least the industrial products of England, to make their way into France itself, where they competed with the French products. But for the industries of the rest of the Continent Napoleon had no such interest, wishing solely to prevent their competition with the continental exports of France; and, lastly, it is manifest that neither of these points could create uneasiness in respect of colonial goods of British origin.

From the very outset this caused an expedient which could not fail to lead the whole system into a wrong track, namely, that the towns and other places where the goods were seized received the right to repurchase them, usually at an extremely high figure. Consequently, the goods were not excluded. On the contrary, the different continental markets were able, to a very large extent, to provide themselves by means of such repurchases (rachats), and the control of illicit imports was thus rendered exceedingly difficult—a result which was also furthered by the great auctions that Napoleon caused to be held for the sale of captured and confiscated, though not repurchased, goods.2 The only device which might have completely eradicated the difficulty would have been the absolute destruction of the illicit goods in accordance with earlier methods; and for several years it does not appear to have occurred to Napoleon to go so far. But the injury done by the repurchase tactics was not limited to this, but went much deeper, inasmuch as from the very beginning it robbed the policy of its ideal attributes and its stamp of grandeur, as being a means for the emancipation of the Continent. It gave rise to intrigues, which in an incessant crescendo strengthened the notion that the intention of the whole affair was merely to levy blackmail, to find a means of squeezing money out of the continental peoples for the benefit of the Emperor and French funds, as well as of French marshals, generals and soldiers, ministers and consuls. Already in connexion with the events of 1808 an unusually competent observer, Johann Georg Rist, the German-born representative in Hamburg of France's intimate ally, Denmark, writes in his memoirs, compiled in the years 1816 to 1821, that no one among the merchants, peasants or officials, or even among the scholars, believed in any plans for the good of Europe, but only in the desire to line French pockets. It was commonly held that no justice was to be expected, but merely arbitrariness and the basest motives, all marked by high words, threats, and deception. And with regard to the last phase of the system (from 1810 onward) almost exactly the same words fall from Mollien, who was Napoleon's good and faithful servant, though a man of strong and independent judgment. He says that 'this pretended system...deprived of every vestige of political prestige, has only proved itself in the eyes of everybody to be the most pernicious and false of fiscal inventions'.3 It was precisely fiscalism, the bane of so many systems of commercial policy, which thereby got a footing from the very beginning in the imposing and soaring plan and threw radical difficulties in the way of its execution.

This was all the more the case for the reason that Napoleon's assumption that everything was sold on credit was so far from being correct that it was the very reverse of the truth. Apparently the demand that prevailed on the Continent for British and colonial goods made it possible for them to be sold practically always for cash; consequently it was the continental buyers who were the chief sufferers. And even when that was not the case, one finds the continental buyers, e.g., not only Hamburg merchants, but importers all over Germany and Holland generally—according to the evidence in 1807 of their British creditors themselves—displaying an extraordinary zeal in the regular payment of their debts.4

Consequently there was little or no likelihood that the British would tire of supplying the Continent with goods. On the contrary, the inner history of the Continental System came to consist essentially in the embittered and uninterrupted struggles against the endless stream of British goods.

This difficulty with which Napoleon was confronted with regard to the very structure of the blockade was further complicated by the difficulty of getting honest and zealous persons to assist him in putting it into execution. It was almost impossible to obtain such assistants among his allies and their organs; and consequently one of the most amply justified views in the historical literature of the present time is the explanation that the incessant extension of the empire along the coast of Europe was due to the Emperor's need of direct control, with a view to the observance of the Continental System. Of the innumerable examples of this we may mention two, one Swedish and one Prussian. In August 1811, when Sweden was nominally at war with Great Britain, Axel Pontus von Rosen, the Governor of Gothenburg, informed the minister of state, von Engeström, that for once in a way he had caused to be confiscated ten oxen intended for Admiral Saumarez's English fleet, which lay off Vinga, and added: 'I entreat that this be put in the papers, so that I, wretched that I am, may for once wear the nimbus of Continental zeal in the annals of Europe. Saumarez was informed beforehand, so that he will not be annoyed.' During the winter of 1811-12 a systematic import of forbidden colonial goods by the state itself went on in Prussia through a special commissioner for the minister of finance, Privy Councillor von Heydebreck; and at the same time Hardenberg, the leading minister, wrote to that very man and requested the strictest inquiry into the smuggling.5

But the fact that the situation was untenable when the application of the system lay in such hands must by no means be interpreted to mean that the difficulties were overcome so soon as Napoleon was able to set his own administrators to the task. The general weakness of authority in those days, in comparison with the present day, was perhaps best expressed in the lack of will and capacity on the part of subordinate organs to follow out the intentions of the heads of the state, and that, too, even under such an almost superhumanly equipped ruler as Napoleon. The fiscal methods—to use a fine-sounding expression—which Napoleon employed in his own interest were often turned by his subordinates against him, or at least against his policy; and his altogether unabashed endeavour to turn these abuses to his own account never failed to divert the Continental System still further from its task. In these respects the difference is inconsiderable between the various organs which were more or less completely employed for the purposes of the blockade policy, viz., the large detachments of troops along the coast and their naval coadjutors in ports and estuaries, the customs staff and border police, and finally the local administration in the territories belonging to the Empire and the French legation staffs and consuls in vassal states and occupied territories.

CHAPTER II.

RESULTS OF THE SELF-BLOCKADE (1806-1809)

EXECUTION OF THE SELF-BLOCKADE

IN order to form a concrete notion of the manner in which the Continental System worked, one may properly begin by following the general lines of its development, even though the constant efforts and hindrances exhibit a certain monotony, which, however, is broken in 1810 by what constitutes a change in principle. Our account in the first place concerns the coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic and the parts of the mainland that lie behind them, Germany and Holland, which played the principal parts in the policy, and in which, moreover, that policy is best known.

The Continental System, being an almost unbroken continuation of the previous policy, led to the peculiar effect that the seizures of British goods began before the actual issue of the Berlin decree—in Leipzig, Frankfurt-am-Main, Meppen, which was important for trade up the Ems, Holland, Switzerland, &c. But it was in the Hanse Towns that the centre of gravity lay, and the military cordon in particular was during this first phase (the close of 1806) mainly limited to the North Sea coast from Emden, in East Friesland, which was just at that time ceded to Holland, to Hamburg, with the salient along the boundary of Holstein, at that time belonging to Denmark, as far as Travemünde, the outport of Lübeck on the Baltic.

NAPOLEON'S ORDERS IN DECEMBER 1806

The best idea of the apparatus which was set going can be obtained from the letters which Napoleon wrote on December 2 and 3 to Marshal Mortier in Hamburg, to the police and navy ministers, and to his brother, King Louis of Holland, and from the simultaneously issued proclamation (December 2) as to the blockade in the northeast. In the first of the letters Mortier received orders to occupy Vegesack on the Weser, north of Bremen, in order to complete the blockade of that river. King Louis was to place batteries on the left bank of the river, in order to have a cross fire from corresponding batteries at Bremerlehe on the eastern shore. In the mouth of the Elbe a redoubt and a battery were to be erected on an island in the river immediately opposite Stade, so that no vessel could pass without being examined, and no English goods could come in through Altona, Hamburg, or any other place; and in all three Hanse Towns French troops were to be stationed to stop English letters. A brigadier general was to be stationed in Stade, and another in the outport, Cuxhaven; and in addition to this, two cordons—one from Hamburg to Travemünde along the frontier of Holstein, and another along the left bank of the Elbe as far as a point just opposite Hamburg—were to be placed under the command of yet a third brigadier general. As regards troops, the greater part of General Dumonceau's division, two Italian regiments and a third of the Dutch cavalry, were to be used for these purposes; and at the same time the minister of the marine received orders to send a post captain with two ensigns and forty sailors to equip some sloops in Stade. The customs authorities received orders to send five hundred (according to the proclamation, three hundred) customs officials under a director of customs and two inspectors of customs. These were the 'green coats', and in point of fact they arrived before the close of the year and soon drew upon themselves the bitter enmity of the population. Finally, Marshal Moncey was to have at his disposal one hundred gendarmes for distribution along the barrier. On that very same day (December 2) Napoleon wrote a second letter to Mortier with a renewed exhortation to set up a good battery at Stade; and above all things he was to prevent all communication between Hamburg and Altona, to confiscate on the Elbe all vessels with potash, coal, and all other goods coming from England, and to detain all letters from England. In these very first orders, however, the difficulty emerged of obtaining honest executors of the measures. The naval minister received a special reminder to send 'unbribable' officers; and from the very beginning an effort was made to interest the soldiers themselves in the effectivity of the blockade by the regulation that they should have the benefit of all confiscations of goods which should try to pass. But in several of the letters, especially that to Fouché, the minister of police, Napoleon says that he has received complaints—in reality only too well founded—about his consul in Hamburg, Lachevardière, who 'seems to steal with impunity'.6

In Hamburg there still survived the continental establishment of the Merchant Adventurers' Company, the most notable English trading company of an older type (the 'Regulated Company'), though it no longer played any considerable part. In order to save this for the English, the Senate of Hamburg purchased the whole establishment, called 'The Merchant Adventurers' Court', and presented it to the members, who became citizens of Hamburg besides and in this way escaped imprisonment, so far as they did not escape by flight. The main thing, however, was the seizure of the English stocks of goods, which Napoleon, after various negotiations, fixed at the somewhat high figure of 17,000,000 francs for Hamburg and 2,000,000 francs for Lübeck; meanwhile Bremen, by delaying the operation for a whole year, managed to smuggle away the greater part of the goods there and had to account for only 377,000 francs. In Leipzig, whose Fair still constituted by far the most important market in Central Europe, especially for manufactured goods to and from all points of the compass, the stocktaking gave a value of 9,150,000 francs, which was redeemed for 6,000,000 francs. Things went in the same way elsewhere.

In Great Britain the publication of the Berlin decree caused, according to evidence given before a parliamentary committee, a cessation of exports to the Continent during the months of December 1806, and of January and February 1807, with a rise in the marine insurance premiums. But the absence of captures on the basis of the decree, which, as we have seen before, was at first regarded as not applying to the sea, after that put new life into commercial intercourse; and an Order in Council of February 18, with instructions for the commanders of vessels, granted unrestricted traffic for the vessels and goods of the Hanse Towns and the rest of that part of North Germany which was occupied by the French; and this safeguarded intercourse with them.7

During the whole of the first six months of 1807, indeed, the Continental self-blockade may be said to have been practically ineffective, at least in North Germany. The systematic dishonesty of Napoleon's tools gave rise to regular orgies during this time, especially with the help of the new commander-in-chief in Hamburg, Marshal Brune, whom Napoleon, with unusually good reason, branded as an 'undaunted robber'. According to the report of de Tournon, who was sent there especially to investigate, Brune's instructions themselves to the customs staff were calculated to encourage smuggling; but that was the case to a very much greater extent with the application of the instructions. When vessels came up the Elbe, they were allowed, in absolute defiance of the instructions quoted above, to continue their journey past Stade, with only one single person from the barrier control on board, usually an ignorant seaman, while the customs officials themselves were consistently kept at a distance. The bill of lading was examined by a sub-officer of the navy; and the inspection which it was the duty of Consul Lachevardière to carry out, was handed over by him to a Hamburg broker, who had the greatest possible interest in letting everything pass. On the basis of the entirely uncontrolled investigation of this person, the consul afterwards issued a certificate as to the non-English origin of the goods; and fabricated Holstein certificates of origin were always available to bolster up the certificate. At the close of May 1807, Brune went a step farther and removed the always relatively zealous customs officials from the Hamburg-Travemünde frontier line and the Elbe line from Harburg (immediately opposite Hamburg) to Stade, replacing them by gendarmes. Consequently, during the five and a half months down to the beginning of August there arrived in Hamburg, without impediment, 1,475 vessels with cargoes estimated at 590,000 tons, including the most notoriously English goods, such as coal. According to the investigator just mentioned, Hamburg was chock full of English and colonial goods, which were sold as openly as in London, and not a single seizure had occurred. This would also seem to have been the time at which Bourrienne, Napoleon's envoy in Hamburg—according to his own story, which is in this case confirmed from English sources—obtained cloth and leather from England in order to be in a position to supply Napoleon's own army with the uniform coats, vests, caps, and shoes which he had to procure.8

The farce of Brune's conduct in Hamburg, however, was too much for Napoleon, who removed him in the latter half of July and appointed Bernadotte as his successor. This appointment manifestly brought with it a stricter enforcement of the law, although the new and well-meaning despot that the Hamburgers thereby got proved rather costly to the town; nor did he entirely escape more or less unproven accusations of corruptibility, both from Napoleon and also, later on, from the Senate of Hamburg.9 Above all, however, after the removal of Brune, Napoleon regulated the blockade by means of two new decrees of August 6 and November 13, 1807. These placed the right of seizing English goods into the hands of the customs staff, which was strengthened at the same time, while the troops were placed at the disposal of the customs officials and increased guaranties were provided in various ways that unlawful goods should not be permitted to escape examination. In doing this Napoleon fell back on the old and very clumsy expedient of declaring large main groups of goods to be eo ipso British when they did not come from France, that is to say, the majority of textile goods, (except certain ones imported by the Danish East Asiatic Company), cutlery and hardware, glass, pottery, and lump sugar; and for the colonial goods detailed certificates of origin were required from the French commercial agents in the exporting port. As regards the question as to whether a vessel had put in at an English port, a searching examination was prescribed of the captain and the sailors separately, and the arrest of such of them as should give false information, after which they should be set free only after the payment of a heavy fine (6,000 francs for the captain and 500 francs for each sailor). All such vessels were to be confiscated, while the Berlin decree merely prescribed their expulsion. The latter of these two decrees, that concerning certificates of origin, the examination of the crews, and the confiscation of the vessels, was given practically unaltered validity for the whole Empire through what is called the first Milan decree, issued ten days later (November 23). Within barely a month, as we have seen,10 there followed the answer to the Orders in Council, the great second Milan decree, which marks the end of Napoleon's measures bearing on the Continental System in 1807. On the heels of all this, immediately after the beginning of the new year (January 11, 1808) there came the so-called Tuileries decree, which sought to induce the crews and passengers of vessels to reveal any call in an English port by promising one-third of the value of the vessel and cargo as a reward. In September 1807, Napoleon, with his customary ruthlessness, had intervened in Holland and, to the despair of his brother Louis, had calmly caused his gendarmes to convey to France from that nominally independent kingdom a citizen of Breda and a citizen of Bergen-op-Zoom on the suspicion of smuggling.

At the same time, thanks to Canning's almost Napoleonic contempt for the independence of neutrals, Napoleon received valuable assistance in the blockade of the North Sea coast in consequence of the bombardment of Copenhagen in the beginning of September and the breach between Denmark and Great Britain. As a matter of fact, Schleswig-Holstein, during the whole of the preceding period, had been a serious obstacle in the way of Napoleon's measures south of the Elbe. When the Elbe and the Weser were barred, Tönning in particular, but also Husum on the west coast of Schleswig, had largely replaced the Hanse Towns during the years 1803-6 as importers of English and colonial goods; and their trade had flourished like plants in a forcing-house. All attempts to prevent the passing of goods to the south from Holstein territory through the town of Altona, which was practically continuous with Hamburg (all zu nah), met with almost insuperable difficulties, all the more as the local Holstein authorities never failed to certify the neutral origin of the goods. It was, therefore, of very great importance that the ruler of Denmark, the Crown Prince Frederick, embittered through the conduct of Great Britain, placed himself at the service of the Continental System, with almost unique loyalty, and as early as September 1807 ordered the seizure of all forbidden goods in Holstein. Almost alone among the allies of Napoleon, he repudiated the idea of feigning adherence to the system while the real intention was to allow intercourse with Great Britain. His was not the principle suaviter in re, fortiter in modo, to quote a modern historian. It is true that the British, on their side, made a counter-move which was to have far-reaching consequences in the opposite direction, in that, simultaneously with the attack on Copenhagen, they occupied the Danish possession of Heligoland; but the effects of this did not immediately show themselves.11

RESULTS IN 1807

It remains to be seen, accordingly, to what extent Napoleon, at the close of the year 1807, had attained his immediate object, the self-blockade of the Continent, not only in form but also in substance. As regards France herself, this had clearly been the case to a very high degree, as we can see from a very good barometer, namely, that a shortage of raw cotton was already threatening. As early as September the cotton manufacturers were speaking of having to close their mills if a breach with the Portuguese and Americans occurred; and the price of Brazilian cotton (Pernambuco) in Paris rose from 6.80-7.30 francs to 8.10-15 francs per kg., while the price in London of 1s. 10d.-1s. 11d. per pound corresponded to only 5-5½ francs. As the British prohibition on the exports of raw cotton was not issued until the year 1808, and the imports of raw cotton into Great Britain were uncommonly large in the year 1807 (74,900,000 lb. as against only 58,200,000 lb. in the previous year), it is apparent from the very first how the difficulties of importation into the Continent expressed the strength of the self-blockade and not of the British measures of reprisal.

The position in Central Europe can usually be best followed from the great meeting-point for continental trade, the Leipzig Fair, which was sensitive to every change; and the position there is illustrated by the unusually impartial and detailed Saxon 'reports of the fair' (Messrelationes), in the form in which they have been worked up by the German historians Hasse and, more particularly, König. In these reports there appears throughout a lively movement of both British industrial products and colonial goods during the earlier part of 1807, including among other things the parcels confiscated in Hamburg and redeemed. These commanded a ready sale, despite the fact that the manufactured goods included in them were largely out of date. But the autumn measures in the Hanse Towns and Holstein led to a great scarcity of British textiles and an enormous rise in price (over 150 per cent.) on British cotton yarn, so that Napoleon could here be assured of an immediate result from his own measures and those of his new Russian ally. For the Hanse Towns this result extended also to colonial goods, so that the price of coffee, for instance, stood 20 per cent. higher in the old coffee-importing town of Hamburg than in Leipzig; and contrary to anything that had ever before been beheld, it was conveyed to the former place from the latter. Accordingly, the decline of shipping in Bremen stands out very clearly even in the statistics of 1807. A similar transformation occurred in Holstein, but with regard to the rest of Central Europe the effects did not yet extend to the colonial goods. This was chiefly due to the fact that the trade through Holland, in spite of everything, was still comparatively undisturbed, especially with American vessels, as the Embargo Act was not passed until the latter part of December 1807. Moreover, Rotterdam was alleged to have daily communication with England, just as in time of peace. British yarn was also shipped to Leipzig and Holland, and in September, 1807, the Belgian manufacturers complained that The Hague was so crowded with British cottons that a man might fancy himself in Manchester. With regard to colonial goods, it was also stated that the great Amsterdam firm of Hope & Co. had huge stores of sugar and coffee. This firm, which during the whole of this period played a leading part in almost all great international transactions of a commercial and financial nature, and also intervened in matters of public policy, was, incidentally, a living monument of the close commercial relations between the enemies, as it had a French head, Labouchère, who stood in close connexion with the world-famous British commercial house of Baring Brothers. Nor does there appear to have been any great scarcity of raw cotton, especially owing to imports through the Mediterranean ports of Lisbon, Leghorn, and Trieste. The first of these, however, disappeared through the conquest of Portugal in the autumn of 1807, and the second through the occupation of Etruria at the close of the year. But Holland remained as an important gap, which became the more serious from Napoleon's point of view after he had, in the second Milan decree of December 1807, passed to the view that there were no such things as neutrals; and consequently he could no longer tolerate the American shipping in Dutch ports. At the turn of the year 1807-8, it is true, British industrial products did not seem to enter as easily as before; but it was soon to prove that Napoleon had underestimated the strength of two forces which were constantly to rise up against his plans, viz., smuggling and the opening-up of new commercial routes.

Finally, if we regard the process of development from a British standpoint, we have the evidence, already cited,12 of the witnesses before a parliamentary committee that Napoleon's many counter-measures in the late summer and autumn caused a sudden stagnation in trade with the Continent. The marine insurance premiums, which at the time of the issue of the Berlin decree had risen from 6 to 10 per cent., but had then declined to 4 per cent., were stated to have reached such amounts as 15, 20, and 30 per cent. before the middle of October 1807. In sixty-five cases during September and October vessels that had taken in cargo for the Continent had requested permission to discharge them again. If we look at the statistical material available to throw light on the matter, we can establish in a comparatively exact way the effects of the Continental blockade during 1807. It is especially noteworthy that the great exports of cotton goods show almost absolutely unaltered figures (£9,708,000, as against £9,754,000 in 1806 and an average of only £7,340,000 in the years 1801-5, all according to the 'official values', which are based upon unchanged unit prices from year to year); nor do the far less important exports of yarn show any great decline (£602,000 in 1807, as against £736,000 in 1806 and an average of £666,000 in the years 1801-5). The probably less reliable figures for total exports show a somewhat more marked but nevertheless insignificant decline, namely, in relation to the year 1806 (8.1 per cent. according to the 'official values' and only 6.4 per cent. according to 'real values', which are also affected by changes in price). On the other hand, we can see from these statistics that the sales on the Continent were much more limited, namely, by nearly 33 per cent., according to 'real values' in 'the north of Europe, including France'; and probably the exports of manufactured goods to those markets declined more than exports as a whole. This result agrees very well with what might have been expected under the restrictive measures of the last quarter of the year.13

Next we have to consider colonial goods, which were intended to 'conquer England by excess'.14 The trade statistics do not show any decrease of exports at all, but rather a slight increase; and not even the sales to the Continent are notably diminished. But one can see from the tables in Tooke's History of Prices that the price of coffee and sugar declined slightly in the autumn of 1807. Possibly one may point to a slightly greater dislocation in one single department, namely, in the imports of Baltic goods; and the fact is that this applies to the Baltic trade in general, evidently in consequence of the breach with Russia and Prussia, rather than through the Continental System proper. Hemp and more especially tallow, both from Russia, show a rise in prices in the course of the year, and timber from Memel exhibits violent fluctuations from the middle of 1806. But all this is a trifle; and during 1807 there are, broadly speaking, no traces of any substantial result of the policy as regards Great Britain's foreign trade as a whole. In fact, there are considerably less than one would have expected from the diminished importation of British industrial products to the German market.

TRANSMARINE MARKETS (1808)

It was important for Napoleon, accordingly, to attain during 1808 a more effective application of the measures of the preceding year. Great Britain also now encountered various new difficulties; but the peculiar thing about them is that they had no direct connexion with Napoleon's proceedings, but at the most with the British Orders in Council—a fact which the British opposition, as in duty bound, did not fail to point out. The truth is that they were chiefly caused by the American Embargo Act, partly through the diminished importation of American goods, and partly through the great diminution of tonnage, as explained in part II, chapter IV. Accordingly, the result for Great Britain was a diminished importation of, and raised prices on, raw materials, which in reality did not at all correspond to Napoleon's wishes that prices should be low in England and high on the Continent. The imports of raw cotton sank by 42 per cent., of American cotton to Liverpool by no less than 82 per cent., of wool by 80 per cent., of flax by 39 per cent., of hemp by 66 per cent., of tallow by 60 per cent., &c. Naturally enough, under these circumstances, the price of the most important kinds of raw cotton, for instance, increased in the course of the spring and summer 100 per cent. or more. Especially striking, too, was the rise in prices on goods from Scandinavia and from the Baltic countries in general: timber, hemp, flax, tallow, bristles, tar, but above all linseed, the price of which, at least according to Lord Grenville's statement in the House of Lords, rose more than tenfold. The shortage of raw cotton reacted on the spinning industry, which did not fail to complain of its distress by a whole series of petitions to Parliament, wherein special emphasis was laid on the consequences of the breach with America. According to undisputed statements made by the opposition speakers in the beginning of the following year, for instance, the poor-law burdens in Manchester doubled in the course of 1808; only nine mills were running full time, thirty-one had been running half time, and forty-four had entirely suspended operations.15

Many of these complaints, however, referred to the first months of the year. The rise in prices, on the contrary, was partly due to speculation, which began in the latter part of the year and in many respects quite revolutionized the situation. The year 1808, as it went on, came to be dominated in fact by one of the great events in the history of the Continental System—the Spanish uprising. But the direct economic significance of this movement was not primarily what Napoleon once stated, namely, that it gave to England a 'considerable amount of sales on the Iberian peninsula'.16 What a limited part this matter played can be most easily perceived from the following export figures taken from the British trade statistics ('real values').

As appears from this table, the Pyrenean states after 1807 do not figure very largely in the total exports of Great Britain, despite the fact that the increase for Spain is very large in itself; and a good deal, even, of the amount which is included is the direct opposite of new sales, being really supplies for the maintenance of the British troops and the insurgents. Moreover, it is inseparable from the geographical position of the country that the Iberian peninsula could not be suited for what Great Britain chiefly needed on the Continent, namely, an entrance gate for its goods. The smuggling which now began across the Pyrenees into France cannot have weighed very heavily, as is shown by the figures in the tables themselves.17 The establishment of the new relations with Spain in 1808, like the flight of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil in the preceding year, was principally important in quite another way, namely, in that it placed Great Britain in very close connexion with the transmarine markets. The West Indian possessions of Spain, especially Cuba and Porto Rico, thus transferred the trade in colonial goods to England, while the mainland colonies in South America and Mexico created a large new market for British industrial products. It is easy to understand that in British eyes this new position seemed to open up the possibility of circumventing the whole of Napoleon's laboriously constructed rampart against British trade; and this was all the more welcome because at the same time the United States had shut herself off from the rest of the world. The very peculiar British export figures to America for these years show the following fluctuations ('real values'):

The whole of this striking transformation, which caused the exports to Central and South America to become a more than abundant compensation for the very great reduction in exports to the United States, was wont to be cited by the British government speakers as evidence that the Orders in Council had not injured the exports of the country, but had only caused a transition to direct trade with the former markets instead of sales to the North Americans as intermediaries. The mouthpieces of the opposition, however, maintained, and with more reason, that this new trade was really a new conquest brought about by the Spanish uprising and consequently no result of the destruction of trade with the United States by the Orders in Council.

BRITISH SPECULATION IN SOUTH AMERICA

The new outlet for sales which thus seemed to offer itself gave rise to a violent speculation with all the distinctive characteristics of a boom—general optimism, great sales, industrial activity, and rising prices in the articles of speculation. As early as 1806 Sir Home Popham, the second in command of a naval expedition, had made of his own accord an attack on the mouth of the Plata and had taken Buenos Aires, upon which he sent home eight wagon-loads of silver accompanied by a boastful circular addressed to the manufacturing towns of England together with a list of all the goods that could find a ready sale in his conquest; but as ill luck would have it, Buenos Aires had to be evacuated before the goods had yet arrived. Now that access to those markets was secured, merchants were attracted, by the memory of the hope aroused by Popham's circulars and the loads of silver, into incredibly bold ventures in the way of exports. McCulloch, the political economist, describes the frenzy, after a contemporary source, as follows:

The final consequences of these speculations could not be advantageous, but for the time being the situation seemed flourishing. The total exports during 1808 exhibit approximately unaltered figures, but the exports of cotton goods rose by 29 per cent., irrespective of the change in price. But this did not hold good of Central and Northern Europe, where the British trade statistics indicate a very heavy decline for both British goods (from £5,090,000 to £2,160,000) and colonial goods (from £5,730,000 to £3,270,000). This, however, is largely counterbalanced by a corresponding rise in exports to the Mediterranean countries; and other information points to considerably larger exports to the north of Europe, as shall be shown shortly.19

If we examine the position on the mainland and especially in Germany somewhat more closely, we find the greatest change in 1808 to be a unique rise in the price of raw cotton and a shortage in the supplies, which were obtained mainly from the sale of captured cargoes. At the Michaelmas Fair in Leipzig the price of Brazilian cotton (Pernambuco) rose 223 per cent. above the normal; and, as before, this was especially felt in France, where the textile industry in Nantes was enabled by government loans to go over from cotton to wool. As Great Britain herself suffered from a shortage of raw cotton, this can only in part be ascribed to the Continental self-blockade. With regard to its efficaciousness, Napoleon was able to record an advance in one quarter, namely, in Switzerland, where the smuggling of British goods ceased after 1808; but Holland, which was far more important from this point of view, was still a tender spot. It is true that King Louis, as early as January, did something to bring about an effective barring of the coast; but the smuggling went on so openly that, according to the evidence of Louis himself, the shops of Leyden displayed without disguise quantities of British manufactures. By decree of September 16, 1808, Napoleon, who a little earlier had asserted that there were people who had pocketed 20,000,000 francs through smuggling in Holland, had recourse in violent indignation to the measure of closing the frontier of France to all colonial goods from Holland. This seems to have had a certain effect, as one can see from the fact that the imports of British yarn and British manufactures, which last had already been insignificant, to Leipzig through Holland ceased entirely at this time. A month later (October 23, 1808) there was issued an extremely draconic Dutch decree as to the closing of the ports. This decree was so outré that it bears every mark of applying the principle suaviter in re, fortiter in modo: all exports were prohibited until further notice; no commercial vessels, domestic or foreign, might put in at any Dutch ports, under any pretext, on pain of being fired at; fishing vessels were to return to their port of departure, but were to be confiscated on the least sign of intercourse with the enemy, &c.20

NEW TRADE ROUTES VIA HELIGOLAND AND SWEDEN (1808)

The effect of this, however, was a new change in the channels followed by trade. To begin with, Heligoland now showed its immense importance as an emporium or base for the smuggling of British goods into north Germany. In 1808, according to Rist's dispatches, Great Britain expended £500,000 in building a port, fortifications and warehouses on the little island covering about 150 acres. A number (stated to be 200) of British merchants and representatives of commercial houses settled there and formed a special chamber of commerce; and this peculiar centre of trade was jestingly called 'Little London'. According to the statements of the British merchants themselves, during three and a half months (August-November 1808) nearly 120 vessels discharged their cargoes there, and the yearly imports were estimated—though, to judge by the commercial statistics, this estimate was almost certainly too high—at £8,000,000, or nearly a sixth of the total exports of Great Britain for 1808 (£50,000,000). It is not surprising, therefore, that great quantities of goods had to lie exposed to wind and weather, and that there was scarcely standing room on the island. The difficulty consisted, of course, in smuggling the goods into the mainland afterwards; but the Continental blockade had again been weakened by the fact that in the beginning of the year Napoleon had been obliged to evacuate Oldenburg out of regard to his Russian ally, who was related to the Duke of Oldenburg. It is difficult to determine from accessible sources what routes the goods afterwards followed. From Bremen a certain amount reached Leipzig for the Easter Fair, but after that nothing; and both the shipping of Hamburg and the trade of Bremen had, according to their own sources, almost ceased to exist. But there were many possibilities left, especially through Holstein, where the population and the officials alike did their best to neutralize the loyalty of the Danish government to the system. They succeeded admirably, and it is certain that there are no symptoms at all of decline in the traffic via Heligoland.

During 1808, moreover, Sweden had begun to serve as a storing place for British goods. The Swedish trade statistics had previously shown an excess of exports during the century, especially as regards Great Britain; but during 1808 there was a complete reversal, so much so that the imports from there amounted to 6,650,000 riksdaler, as against exports amounting to 2,610,000 riksdaler. It was colonial goods that went this way, for the most part through Gothenburg, the position of which as one of the foci of the commerce of the world had, to judge by its export statistics, been coming into view even in the previous year. Imports more than doubled in one year. What were for the circumstances of the time very considerable quantities of sugar and coffee (2,900,000 lb. and 1,300,000 lb., respectively) were exported from there in 1808; and when Admiral Saumarez was in the town, in May, he wrote to his son: 'Gothenburg is a place of great trade at this time; at least 1,200 sail of vessels of different nations are in the port.' From there the goods tried to find their way into Germany through the South Baltic ports.21

Thus Napoleon was still far from his goal, and the Spanish rising in particular was to carry him farther and farther away. As early as October 1, 1808, his brother Louis—who was always pessimistic, it is true—wrote to the eldest of the brothers, Joseph Bonaparte, the newly created King of Spain: 'Far from settling down, matters get more and more tangled, and—perhaps I speak too much as a Dutchman, but I find something revolutionary in the way in which war is made on commerce—it seems to me that they never will attain the object that they have set before them'. At the same time as Spain and Portugal, he thinks, South America and Mexico have thrown themselves open to the English; 'and for a chimerical system the whole Continent is losing its trade and shipping, while that of England grows prodigiously'.22

DIMINISHED VIGILANCE DURING THE AUSTRIAN CAMPAIGN (1809)

This line of development was especially marked in 1809 when Napoleon's campaign against Austria and the Spanish uprising also made heavy demands on him and his troops, while trade under a neutral, that is to say, American flag, again became possible through the Non-intercourse Act, bringing it about that the importation of raw materials into Great Britain again became normal and the possibilities of smuggling into the Continent grew greatly. Great Britain could also now rejoice in the highest prosperity in the new trade she acquired through the Spanish uprising, as is most plainly shown by the tables given above.23 The British exports of cotton goods show a unique rise: manufactured goods from £12,500,000 to £18,400,000 and yarn from £470,000 to £1,020,000 ('official values', that is to say, irrespective of changes in prices). The former thus underwent an increase of nearly 50 per cent., and the latter of more than 100 per cent., as compared with the in themselves high figures of 1808.

This was not solely an effect of the possession of new markets. On the contrary, all our sources are agreed in attributing it to the diminished watchfulness on the North Sea, where the self-blockade was alleged—with some exaggeration, it is true—to have in reality ceased; and it was considered that trade was being carried on almost as in time of peace. This is made visible, indeed, by a rise in the figures for British exports to North Europe from £2,160,000 to £5,700,000 for British goods, and from £3,270,000 to no less than £8,870,000 for colonial goods. With a zeal that infallibly reminds us of the saying, 'When the cat's away the mice will play,' all Napoleon's tools on the North Sea coast took advantage of his absence in Austria to relax the bonds and to let in vessels, especially those under the American flag. As early as the middle of March 1809, King Louis of Holland declared to the Emperor that his country was 'physically unable to endure the closing of the ports' in combination with the closing of the Franco-Dutch frontier ordered by Napoleon in the previous September; and accordingly he made certain relaxations in the blockade by sea at the close of the month. When Napoleon, at the beginning of June, rescinded his September decree, his brother embraced the opportunity to rescind the order prohibiting American vessels to put in at Dutch ports. This caused Napoleon to put the barring of the frontier in force again in the middle of July; but not only the showers of abuse which Napoleon poured over his unhappy brother, but also his brother's correspondence with the Dutch ministers, show distinctly enough how smuggling was going on in Holland itself throughout the entire year.

Farther to the north smuggling through Oldenburg continued into the following year. A sudden fall in the price of cotton yarn in northern Germany was caused in February 1809, by the large stocks that the Manchester manufacturers had laid up in Heligoland; and as an example of the scope of the traffic which was carried on from that island, it may be mentioned, on the authority of the statements of the Heligoland merchants, that sixty-six vessels and seventy smaller boats were able, during nineteen days in June 1809, to land on the coast goods to the value of several hundred thousand pounds. According to French reports, the guards along the Elbe and the Weser, too, were now reduced to a few untrustworthy Dutch soldiers and gendarmes under the command of a drunken officer. If we cross to Schleswig-Holstein territory, we find there the same phenomenon, namely, a huge expansion of the colonial trade. What is called the second Tönning period, which is marked by these American visits, began in June 1809, and lasted to the end of the year. The traffic all along the line was formally facilitated by the British government by means of the new Order in Council of April 26, which restricted the declaration of blockade in the north to the River Ems, at least in so far as the German North Sea coast was not reckoned as a dependency of France, which, of course, is just what it actually was. In reality, however, this meant comparatively little, inasmuch as the old regulations were in practice applied by the issue of the British government licences, which shipping was scarcely able to do without.

At the same time English trade was being transferred to Gothenburg and the Baltic ports. In Gothenburg the British set up, in 1809, special warehouses and stores on Fotö immediately opposite the entrance to the harbour. The re-exports of raw sugar almost trebled, while the exports of coffee, like the shipping of the port in general, more than doubled. The Prussian and the Pomeranian ports now became regular gates of entry for the importation of goods; and the Baltic coast came to be the centre of trade to such an extent that the fierante, the Jewish traders of Eastern Europe, went to Königsberg and Riga, instead of Leipzig, in order to cover their requirements of British manufactures. Finally, great quantities of British yarn came to Trieste and Fiume before the Austro-French war, and even after its close, from the repurchased parcels.24

REES-BREMEN BARRIER (SCHÖNBRUNN DECREE OF JULY 18, 1809)

Obviously this development did not escape the notice of Napoleon. On the contrary, he was kept informed by a veritable army of spies as to what was happening both within and without his empire, and it is clear that he did not wish to let it go on without taking steps to stop it. He did not even delay his counter-measures until the close of the Austrian campaign, but limited them in the main to the attempt to isolate Holland, which in his eyes was the most serious breach of all in the system. At the same time as he renewed, as has been mentioned above, the closing of the frontier against France,25 he suddenly ordered, by the decree of Schönbrunn on July 18, 1809, a corresponding closing of the frontier on the side of Germany and caused this to become operative at once without even informing the 'protected' princes in the Confederation of the Rhine who were affected by the blockade, viz., his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and the Grand Duke of Berg. The smuggled goods were considered by the French director-general of customs, Collin de Sussy, to go direct up the Rhine and the Ems, and then to go by land through the Grand Duchy of Berg, practically corresponding to the Ruhr district, to the whole Confederation of the Rhine. At the close of July, French customs officers were moved into the country, forming a chain from Bremen through Osnabrück down to the Rhine at Rees close to the Dutch frontier, which was thereby cut off from connexions eastward. This cordon was made threefold, consisting of troops, gendarmes and customs officers. According to one statement, one of the lines went along the Dutch frontier from Varel, near the beach of Jade, to Emmerich on the Rhine immediately north of Rees. The violence with which the whole thing was carried out, however, caused great confusion. The local authorities refused to assist the customs officers and protested against their movements; the gendarmes were at times positively hostile to them; and to crown all, the customs officials were sometimes corrupt, so that the blockade of the non-French part of the Continent still continued to be practically a failure on well-nigh all points. The unbroken severity of the action that Napoleon followed in Holland, especially by the incorporation of the region south of the Waal in March 1810, seems not to have borne any great fruit either. At any rate, as late as May of the same year King Louis wrote sourly to Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio: 'I have received the letter in which you inform me that smuggling is going on to a great extent on the coast of my kingdom. Like you, I believe that it goes on wherever there are coasts, in Germany as in Holland, and even in France.' The complete annexation of Holland in July created a new situation here, but at the same time it made the barrier between Holland and Germany somewhat purposeless.

During the first half of the year 1810, therefore, the situation was not greatly changed. Frankfurt, in particular, could rejoice in an entirely undiminished trade in colonial goods, which came in through the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic, and were conveyed thence to northern Italy, southern France, and even to Holland and eastern France. The then minister of Prussia in this capital of the Confederation of the Rhine actually declared at the beginning of the year that the town had never before played such a part in the trade of Europe nor been so full of colonial goods; and the trade seems further to have increased in the course of the summer. As regards Leipzig, to be sure, it was stated before and during the Easter Fair in 1810 that the imports through the North Sea ports, especially of English yarn, had practically ceased. But to make up for this, the transfer of the trade to the Baltic ports was now definitive, helped with the best of good-will by Prussia, and also by Sweden and Mecklenburg, to circumvent the Continental System in every conceivable way, and, for that matter, with useful help from the corrupt French consuls in the ports. Königsberg above all, but to a great extent the other towns on the south coast of the Baltic—Rostock, Stralsund, Stettin, Memel, and even Riga—now took the place of the Hanse Towns and the Dutch ports; and there began a unique importation of American cotton, which attained its highest level during the summer. The whole of the Confederation of the Rhine, Austria, Switzerland, and even France, were provided from there at a time when spinning mills were springing up on the Continent like mushrooms from the ground. At the Michaelmas Fair in 1810 the value of the supplies of colonial goods in Leipzig was estimated at 65,500,000 francs; and although only a sixth part remained in the town, all cellars, vaults, and storehouses were full to overflowing, chiefly with cotton, but also with coffee, sugar, and indigo.26

D'IVERNOIS'S EPIGRAM

Naturally enough, people in England, especially in government circles, took a very optimistic view of the situation. The new Order in Council of April 1809, however modest was its modification of the paper blockade, is an evidence of this fact. Reasons are found for it in 'different events and changes which have occurred in the relations between Great Britain and the territories of other powers', which meant, of course, the Iberian peninsula. In February 1809, Lord Liverpool, formerly Lord Hawkesbury, who was home secretary at the time, spoke in the House of Lords about 'the flourishing state of commerce'; and as late as May 1810, the British budget debate was marked entirely by a feeling of booming trade and prosperity, so that even on the side of the opposition Huskisson considered that the country was in a happy state of development. Especially seductive was the roseate description given by Perceval as chancellor of the exchequer; and Rose, the vice-president of the Board of Trade, said that he was unable, to be sure, to explain how it could be so, 'but somehow it appeared, that from the industry and ingenuity of our merchants every prohibitory measure of Bonaparte's had utterly failed of its object. In fact, our trade, instead of being limited by it, had rather been extended, in spite of the hostile proceedings of the enemy.' The same idea was expressed with a touch of in a contemporary epigram placed on the title-page of a pamphlet by Sir Francis d'Ivernois, a Swiss naturalized in England, entitled Effets du blocus continental:

• Votre blocus ne bloque point,
• et grâce à votre heureuse adresse
• ceux que vous affamez sans cesse
• ne périront que d'embonpoint.27

CHAPTER III.

SMUGGLING AND CORRUPTION; FISCALISM AND LICENSING

THE tendencies described in the last chapter made it increasingly clear to Napoleon during the year 1810 that he must find new expedients if he was ever to succeed in making the Continental self-blockade effective; and he also had another reason for reshaping his policy, in the great inconveniences which had revealed themselves both in his finances and in French economic life. In order to form a clear idea of this second phase of the history of the Continental System, however, we must consider in a little more detail the smuggling and the system of bribery.28

SMUGGLING

Concerning the prevalence of smuggling under the Continental System lengthy books might be written, for it flourished throughout Europe to an extent of which the world since then, and perhaps even before then, has rarely seen the like. Coercive measures in the sphere of commercial policy have at all times found a palliative in smuggling. But that palliative was used to an infinitely larger extent now that coercion acquired a range previously undreamt of; and at the same time it was felt to be unendurable in a quite different way than formerly, owing both to the increased importance of international intercourse and to the fact that outside the limits of France proper it represented a foreign dominion and lacked moral support in all classes of the community. The purely external forms of the smuggling are of relatively subordinate importance in this connexion. The examples that have been mentioned in the preceding pages, and that will be mentioned in the following pages, may here be supplemented by a couple of contemporary descriptions. One of these by Bourrienne refers to the year 1809 and has a more or less anecdotal character.

Bourrienne's Anecdote

Rist's Description of Hamburg Smuggling

With this may be compared the more informative and certainly quite trustworthy account given by Rist, the representative of Denmark, of the position at Hamburg a year after the period with which we are chiefly concerned here, namely, at the beginning of 1811.29

All this was by no means peculiar to Hamburg, although the fact that Hamburgerberg and country residences and places of amusement lay on the Holstein side rendered control very difficult and led to the rudest and most repulsive corporeal searchings of both women and men in the middle of the open road. Rist says that it was an especially difficult time for the corpulent, just as seems to have been the case during the recent World War on the shores on the Sound. On the North Sea coast the smuggling was still more systematic in Bremen, which, according to Max Schäfer, the latest describer of its fortunes under the Continental System, was a 'smuggling metropolis'. It derived special advantage from what Vandal has called the amphibious nature of the coast, in that, thanks to Die Watten (the numerous islands lying flush with the water), goods could be smuggled in direct from the British. From English sources we learn how raw sugar was sent when refined sugar was prohibited, and eau sucrée when raw sugar was prohibited; how coffee went in as horse-beans, sugar as starch; and how the names of pepper were legion. The same system flourished, however, from Gothenburg in the northwest around all the coasts of Europe to Saloniki in the southeast, without any great variation in the methods. Probably the most primitive expedients were resorted to on the Balkan peninsula. Here sugar was packed in small boxes weighing at the most 200 kilograms, so that they could be transported on horses and asses; in this way it was conveyed by armed bands through Bosnia, Serbia and Hungary to Vienna. France proper was undoubtedly the most closely guarded country, but even there, according to both English and French witnesses, smuggling flourished to a very large extent. At the very same time when the Berlin decree was flung out, when the new prohibitive customs ordinance was enforced for France herself, the English Monthly Magazine, following the statements of experts, described how British goods of different kinds were exported on French orders to France everywhere along the frontiers and could easily be insured up to the place of their destination, and how immediately after their arrival they were stamped as of French manufacture and made to serve as evidence of the high level attained by French industry. A well-informed and intelligent French-American traveller, Louis Simond, who visited Great Britain in 1810-11, relates how the English goods 'are packed in small packages, fit to be carried by hand, and made to imitate the manufactures of the country to which they are sent, even to the very paper and outward wrapper, and the names of the foreign manufacturers marked on the goods.' On pieces of broadcloth in Leeds, for instance, he observed the mark of Journaux Frères of Sedan.

On the sea the smuggling is said to have started principally from Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. Here the goods were packed into hermetically sealed chests, which were afterward thrown into the water, chained to little buoys, like fishing nets, and safely hauled ashore on the French side by the inhabitants under the very eyes of the patrolling vessels. If we may credit an active French customs officer at the time, Boucher de Perthes, the use of British textile goods came very close to the Emperor's person. According to him, Napoleon learned, in the course of a journey with Josephine, that her trunks were crammed with the forbidden goods, and made the customs authorities mercilessly seize them all.

Normality of Smuggling

Through this all-pervading system smuggling acquired a stamp of normality, which was of great importance, especially for Napoleon's subsequent policy, and which forms yet another significant example of the general contrast between appearance and reality by which the policies were dominated. On both sides the smugglers were used as ordinary means of commercial intercourse in cases where it was not desired to recognize a traffic which could not be done away with. In this case the French made use of the English word in the slightly corrupted form of 'smoggler'. Boucher de Perthes, who was sub-inspector of customs at Boulogne in 1811 and 1812, in a letter from there defines them as 'contrabandists of their (the British) nation, who are attached to our police and who at the same time carry on a traffic in prisoners of war and guineas, people of the sack and the rope, capable of everything except what is good'. In another letter he relates how they smuggled French brandy into Great Britain, as well as guineas out of that country, besides acting as spies for both sides. Two or three letters from Napoleon are particularly striking as to the normality of these transactions. In a warning that has already been mentioned,30 one of the many received by King Louis of Holland, the Emperor writes (April 3, 1808): 'If you need to sell your gin, the English need to buy it. Settle the points where the English smugglers are to come and fetch it, and make them pay in money but never in commodities.' In a letter two years later (May 29, 1810) to Gaudin, his minister of finance, he develops in the following way the trade which is carried on with the help of the 'smogglers': 'My intention is to favour the export of foodstuffs from France and the import of money from abroad. At the same time it should be possible to impose a pretty stiff fee, which should be fairly profitable... For that matter I should be very much inclined to let the smugglers in only at Dunkirk, unless current practice required that they should also be received at Flushing.' Thus the whole line of thought as it appears in this letter is almost grotesque; the influx of money is to be effected by smugglers, who are to be treated with such consideration that even their habits are respected. This last is especially striking when compared with Chaptal's account of Napoleon's behaviour toward the legitimate trade, how he wished to command it like a battalion and ruthlessly directed it now here, now there. But the smugglers were necessary for the prosperity of Dunkirk and made that town exempt from the general crippling of economic life in the ports; it was therefore a serious matter for the town to see the smugglers moved from there, as Napoleon threatened to do in 1811.31

Naturally enough, this good-will toward the smugglers was displayed only when they served the interests of the government policy; apart from this there prevailed a war to the knife. On the other hand, the normality was not limited to these cases, but held good over the whole line; and the governments maintained an unequal struggle against the smugglers. In one passage Mollien speaks of the futility of the efforts of 20,000 customs officials, whose posts were known, to guard a frontier threatened by more than 100,000 smugglers, who were supposed to have good connexions in Paris and were favoured by the population besides.32 According to Bourrienne's statement, there were no fewer than 6,000 smugglers in Hamburg alone, a figure, of course, which can make no higher claims than those of Mollien to express anything more than a general notion of the enormous scope of the smuggling.

Commercial Organization of Smuggling

Of special importance is the organized, or, to express it better, the commercial, character of the smuggling. In Naples an economic writer, Galanti, spoke of it as 'a useful trade, inasmuch as it prevents the ruin of the state'; and in various places Napoleon's organs complain that it is regarded as a quite honourable occupation. Smuggling had also quite lost the character of managing by chance to break through the customs barrier on the chance of profit. It was based on definite business practices, with fixed commissions that varied with the degree of certainty surrounding a successful result or the difficulties in the way of getting through to different places or with different goods. In Strassburg there were 'insurers' of different grades, the chief of which charged a commission of from 40 to 50 per cent.; in 1809 it was considered that the expenses of passing the frontier of France were, as a rule, 30 per cent., while the above-mentioned new customs line between Rees and Bremen could be broken through for 6 or 8 per cent.; and at about the same rate it was possible to smuggle any commodity whatever from Holstein into Hamburg. A convincing impression of the business-like character of the smuggling is also given by Napoleon's Fontainebleau decree (October 18, 1810), where a careful distinction is drawn between leaders or undertakers—in Adam Smith's sense—(entrepreneurs), insurers (assureurs), shareholders (intéressés), managers of the practical work (chefs de bande, directeurs et conducteurs de réunions de fraudeurs), and finally 'ordinary bearers' (simples porteurs), in which we find a complete hierarchy ranging downwards from the directors of the smuggling enterprises through the capitalists and officials to the unskilled workers.

But there was a marked difference with regard to the ease with which the different kinds of goods could be smuggled. British industrial products, it is true, came in on a large scale, though, to judge by a statement from Leipzig, principally yarn; but their entrance was resisted by the different governments even in most of the vassal states of France, because they wished to exclude British manufactures on protectionist grounds. The situation was quite different with regard to colonial goods. In this respect all people, from the crowned ruler down to the day labourer, were of one mind and thought in their desire to break the iron band of the Continental System; and the smuggling of these goods accordingly met with nothing but assistance and support.

OFFICIAL CORRUPTION

But the unevenness of the struggle with the great organization at the disposition of the smugglers was enormously increased by the thorough-going corruption which was also distinctive of all branches of administration at the time, especially those branches which had to deal with the blockade.

In part the system of bribery in earlier times undeniably formed simply a kind of pay for the servants of the state, although of the most objectionable kind possible; and the line between perquisites and bribes was often as fine as a hair. With regard to Bremen, for instance, we are told how the constant exactions of money for commandants, war commissaries and consuls—for non-dutiable goods, certificates of origin, and all kinds of lawful intercourse—took the form of fixed fees with definite names; thus the fees for certificates of origin, for instance, increased tenfold during the first six quarters after the issue of the Berlin decree. There was scarcely a place in the territories occupied by France or under French control where similar tactics were not employed. In the autumn of 1810 Napoleon wrote to Marshal Davout instructing him not to let the commander at Danzig, General Rapp, tolerate any corruption, although 'everybody takes bribes'. Hamburg seems to have been especially exposed to people of this type. Marshal Brune, Consul Lachevardière, and almost more than anybody else, Bourrienne, were perfect virtuosi in this respect. As regards Bourrienne, Napoleon is alleged to have said that he (Bourrienne) would have been able to find a silver mine in the garden of the Tuileries if he had been left alone there; and at the beginning of 1811 the Emperor calculated that his former secretary had made seven or eight million francs at Hamburg. The Emperor's letters are full of embittered outbursts against his corruption, which seems to have been carried on quite systematically with the connivance of sub-agents of different sorts, and which finally led, first to his being prohibited to sign certificates of origin, and then to his being removed from office. But these are only isolated examples of things that occurred everywhere.33

Rist, who, like the purely Hamburgian writers, fully confirms the French statements as to the corruptibility of Bourrienne and his associates, does not represent the conduct of his Holstein compatriots in any better light. Moreover, passing to another country, we are informed that in Geneva eighty customs officials had to be dismissed in seven months for complicity in malversation; and from the Rhine frontier we have further information that the director of customs and his relations directly helped the illicit trade in the smuggling centre of Strassburg, and that the customs lieutenants on the Rhine lived on bribes when they had no British pension.

However oppressive a corrupt administration may be to the population, yet the bribery system would scarcely have led Napoleon to change his policy, if the whole thing had been limited to exactions above those allowed by laws and ordinances. From the standpoint of the Continental System, however, the unfortunate thing was that at least as much, and probably more, could be gained by facilitating or actually encouraging—always for a consideration—precisely the traffic which the Continental System aimed to annihilate by every possible means. For such illegalities on the part of the officials the people were willing to pay munificently, and they were, if anything, somewhat more amiably disposed than before toward their foreign rulers. One of the very few persons who from the beginning to the end really made the resolute execution of the Continental System the lodestar of all his conduct, namely, Marshal Davout, Prince of Eckmühl, the last French Governor-General of Hamburg—an ever reliable sword in the Emperor's hand, and, as far as one can see, a man of the same type as the German generals who during the recent war governed occupied territories—for that very reason brought upon himself perhaps a stronger hate than any of Napoleon's other tools; and among the inhabitants of Hamburg he passed under the name of Marshal 'Wuth' (Fury).

FISCALISM

But it was not enough that the Continental System was rendered illusory by the ever-present smuggling, which was constantly assisted sub rosa by the corruptibility of the officials. That smuggling involved another disadvantage in that Napoleon at the same time lost for himself and for France the benefits which an openly conducted traffic of the same scope would have brought with it. This was primarily a matter which concerned the finances of the state; and such a development could not fail to irritate the Emperor, who, of course, always had difficulties in obtaining sufficient revenue, especially as he would not openly have recourse to loans. The customs receipts which a system of imports that were allowed, but made subject to duties, would have yielded, and even, under the former and milder régime, had actually yielded, now fell into the hands of the smugglers and dishonest officials. The customs receipts of France herself, which in 1806 had been 51,200,000 francs and in 1807 had even risen to 60,600,000 francs, declined in 1808 to less than one-third of that amount, or 18,600,000 francs; and in 1809 they declined still further to the insignificant sum of 11,600,000 francs. The powerful head of the French customs system, Collin de Sussy, and also Montalivet, who was somewhat later home secretary, then conceived the characteristic idea that the state might be able to enter into what was literally a competition with the smugglers. This was to be arranged in such a way that in some form or other the importation of the hitherto forbidden goods was to be permitted, but only on payment of a duty that exactly corresponded to an amount which, as we have seen, the smuggling business had previously cost. In that case no more goods would come into the country than had been the case beforehand, but the profit would fall to the state instead of to the smugglers.34

Such a device could not fail to appeal to Napoleon with his cynical sense of reality for everything that had to do with means; but what he shut his eyes to till the last was the great extent to which this means damaged his great end. As a matter of fact, this meant that fiscalism had definitively gotten the upper hand over the Continental System, at least in one-half of its range. The object was no longer to exclude goods, but to make an income by receiving them instead; and no sophistry in the world could make the latter compatible with the former. But we cannot maintain that Napoleon in this respect consciously acted in opposition to his objects. His line of thought was as inconsistent as that which is still constantly found outside the circle of professional economists, in which the fact is ignored that the more prohibitive or protectionistic a customs tariff, the less it brings in, and consequently that that part of a customs duty which keeps goods out brings in no money to the treasury. This duality of conception in Napoleon finds a very typical expression in a letter addressed to his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, on October 3, 1810, in which he first points out how advantageous the new system would be for this young prodigal by bringing him in a larger income; and after that he goes on to say: 'It will also be a great advantage in other respects, since the continental customers of the English merchants will not be able to pay for them (the goods), and the consumption of colonial goods, which will be rendered dear in this way, will be diminished. They will thus be exposed to attack and at the same time driven out of the continent.' The representatives of Napoleon used the same language in dependent countries.35 So far, therefore, the reshaping of the Continental System aimed at no real increase in its efficacy, but rather at the reverse, inasmuch as Napoleon acquired a direct interest in the admission of goods into the country.

On paper, however, no departure from the principles of the Continental System was ever acknowledged, inasmuch as the Berlin and Milan decrees were retained unchanged to the last; and Napoleon zealously impressed on his stepson Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, the necessity of not letting the goods in 'to the detriment of the blockade'. But in his inexhaustible supply of expedients Napoleon found a simple means of circumventing his own system in fact, namely, by granting exceptions from the prohibition on import in the matter of captured goods.

Prize Decree (January 12, 1810)

By a law issued at the very beginning of the year 1810 (January 12), it was laid down that goods the importation of which was forbidden (with the exception of certain kinds of cotton fabrics and hosiery) might be introduced into the country on payment of a customs duty of 40 per cent. when they came from prizes captured from the enemy by war vessels or licensed privateers. This was called 'permitted origin' (origines permises). But the exception here established with regard to cotton goods was developed still further in the course of the year; and in this process Napoleon skilfully took advantage of the different feeling that prevailed on the Continent with regard to colonial goods and English industrial products. In accordance with this, the new system involved a relentless prohibition of British goods, but made concessions with regard to colonial goods, which were admitted on payment of huge duties. So far as the system in this form could be enforced, Napoleon contrived at least not to favour British industry, but only British trade. That the exception was in form restricted to prize goods was in reality of no importance. It is true that Napoleon declared, in a letter to Eugene, that all colonial goods which had not been captured or seized should remain excluded; but according to Thiers, express orders were given in the correspondence of the Customs Department that this should not be strictly observed—and there can be no doubt about the practical extension of the concession to all colonial goods.36

As regards the customs rates, the principle, as has been said already, was that they should correspond to the costs of smuggling. When Holland was incorporated with France on July 9, 1810, it was laid down, in approximate conformity with the above-mentioned law of January, that the large stocks of colonial goods in that country should be admitted to the empire on payment of a duty which in the decree of incorporation was fixed at 50 per cent. of the value, but which, according to a somewhat later declaration, was to be 40 or 50 per cent., according to the time of the declaration. This principle was applied not only to France, but also to all the vassal states, which now became the object of the same merciless pressure with regard to the new system as they had formerly been with regard to the Continental decrees and which, as a rule, formally submitted at least as obediently as then. But to make assurance doubly sure, every stock of colonial goods which was as much as four days' journey from the French frontier was to be regarded as intended to injure France, and was therefore to be subjected to examination by French troops; in fact, French troops were actually employed for the purpose. In order that the right degree of pressure should be attained, it was the intention that the new order should be carried through simultaneously over the whole Continent, so that there would be no country to which the goods could fly in order to escape these heavy burdens; consequently Eugene at least received orders to keep the new instructions secret for the present. Principally out of regard for the captors, but not exclusively in their favour, it was conceded that the duty might be paid in kind, that is to say, by means of a corresponding part of the goods which were to come in, and also in promissory notes; and without this concession it is certain that in many cases such large amounts could not have been gathered in. Every holder of colonial goods was bound to declare them, so that, as Thiers expresses it, the whole was taken in any attempt at barratry and half in case of honest declaration.

Trianon Tariff (August 5, 1810)

The whole of this arrangement has taken its name from the Trianon tariff of August 5, 1810, which is one of the fundamental laws of the new system. This does not provide for customs duties based on a percentage of the values, but laid down specific duties by weight (per 100 kilograms) on the different kinds of colonial goods. Duties of 40 and 50 per cent. still seem to have been applied, however, for prize goods and goods imported by licence, respectively. How high these rates were may perhaps be more clearly set forth by comparing with the highest rates of duty, namely, those on goods from nonFrench colonies, in the tariff of 1806, to which reference has already been made; and yet the 1806 duties had already formed the corner-stone of a whole series of rises in customs duties. The duties at different dates are tabulated in appendix ii, which will perhaps afford the clearest view of the amount of the increase. The most violent was the rate on raw cotton, which as late as 1804 was assessed at only one franc per 100 kilograms. In 1806 this rate was raised to not less than sixty francs, notwithstanding that raw cotton had become the foundation of a main department in the new industrial development which began under the Empire. These rates, however, dwindle into insignificance when compared with what was now enacted. According to the Trianon tariff, South American and long-stapled Georgia cotton had to pay 800 francs; Levantine cotton, if imported by sea, 400 francs, and if passing through the custom-houses on the Rhine, 200 francs; other cotton, except Neapolitan, 600 francs. This classification was evidently intended to hit hardest the goods which were most dependent on English imports. We have already mentioned the fact that all goods from French (Dutch) colonies, with the corresponding vessels, were free, and that the direct imports by American vessels only paid one quarter of the amount, a matter which in reality meant nothing, as the British blockade prevented all such direct imports. Indigo was raised from 15 francs (1803) to 900 francs, after which (in January, 1813) there followed a new rise to 1,100 francs; cloves from 3 francs (1806) to 600 francs; tea from 3 francs (besides, in certain cases, 10 per cent. of the value) to 600 francs for green tea and 150 francs for other kinds; coffee and cocoa from 150 francs and 200 francs, respectively (1806), to 400 francs and 1,000 francs; while fine cinnamon, cochineal and nutmeg, which had not been specified in the older tariffs, all paid 2,000 francs per 100 kilograms. Some thirty new headings were added to the tariff by a supplementary schedule of September 27 of the same year.

Fontainebleau Decree (October 18,
1810)

But as a new road was now in reality opened for the legitimate importation of colonial goods, it was important for Napoleon not only to strike still harder at the illicit importation of those goods, but also to make the sale of British industrial products impossible. It is this idea which lies at the bottom of the immense increase in the rigour of the customs laws which is marked by the Fontainebleau decree of October 18, 1810, the last of the great laws in this department. Both the penalties now introduced and the treatment of the goods themselves involved a reversion to the most violent methods of the prohibitive system. First as regards the prohibited goods, that is to say, manufactured products, the smuggling leaders of different grades were punished with ten years' penal servitude and branding, while the lower-grade tools might under extenuating circumstances get off with a milder kind of punishment (peines correctionnelles) and 5 to 10 years' police supervision. The smuggling of the goods specified on the tariff, that is to say, colonial goods, involved as much as four years' penal servitude, while 'simple smuggling,' that is, smuggling 'without any agreement or obligation of a kind to form an undertaking or insurance,' did not lead to penal servitude.

The regulations as regards the treatment of the goods were carried to still greater lengths than the punishment for smugglers. As regards colonial goods the penalty was limited, as before, to confiscation, the goods to be sold by auction every six months; but with regard to prohibited goods Napoleon now went to the extreme and ordered that they should be publicly burned or otherwise destroyed after a list had been made of them with prices attached. Here Napoleon was following precedents which were to be found in English legislation of the seventeenth century, and which was repeated as late as the beginning of the reign of George III.37 For the whole of this draconic legislation there were erected special customs courts (cours prévôtales des douanes), the operations of which have stood out to later generations as the culmination of the oppression involved in the Continental System.38

Napoleon's Complicity

The system of corruption created by Napoleon's tools under the old order of things could not, however, be abolished simply by the fact that the Emperor himself introduced fiscalism instead of the complete blockade. On the contrary, we find proportionally a still larger number of examples of bribery and embezzlement after the Trianon and Fontainebleau decrees than before. But Napoleon, on his side, had to a great extent changed his treatment of them, in accordance with his new fiscalist tendencies. His method became simply to demand a share of the bribes of the dishonest officials, and in that way convert them into sponges with which to soak up revenue from the illicit trade. The resemblance to the Trianon system is thus striking. Two or three cases from the beginning of 1811 are particularly characteristic in this connexion. One of the most fully compromised officials was the French consul at Königsberg, Clérembault, who released fourteen British ships in the Baltic, belonging to a large flotilla which Napoleon had pursued the whole autumn—of which more anon—with a cargo worth 2,800,000 francs, and was stated to have obtained the magnificent sum of 800,000 francs on this affair alone and 1,500,000-1,600,000 francs altogether. At the same time the malversations of Bourrienne and Consul Lachevardière still went on in Hamburg. With reference to this Napoleon wrote to his foreign minister, Champagny, a highly characteristic New Year's letter to the effect that Clérembault was to hand over to the Foreign Office all that he had received; and he also declared his intention to compel Bourrienne to pay in 2,000,000 francs in the same fashion, while Lachevardière was to pay 500,000 francs to the sinking-fund of the French government. His intention was that the first two amounts should be employed for the erection of a residence for the foreign minister; and the letter ends: 'You will see that I shall get the money for a really handsome palace which will cost me nothing.'39 This was not a mere idle fancy; on the contrary, it turned out that Clérembault had already anticipated matters by paying of his own accord 500,000 francs to the Emperor's privy purse (caisse de l'extraordinaire), and that he had still earlier paid 200,000 francs into the cash box of the Foreign Office. In this manner the Continental System was perverted into a gigantic system of extortion, for naturally this was no way to cut off the Continent from the supply of goods.

LICENSING SYSTEM

The Trianon policy is supplemented by the second great novelty which was introduced during the noteworthy year 1810 in the sphere of the Continental System, namely, the licences. It is true that these in themselves did not form any novelty, even on the part of Napoleon, and, as we know, still less on the part of Great Britain; but on the Continent their importance had been slight, as is shown by the fact that, according to Thiers, the total value of the trade which had been carried on by licences before the Trianon tariff had amounted only to 20,000,000 francs. It was only now that they became a normal and integral part of the Continental System, in close conjunction with the general tendency of the new policy, and thereby contributed, just as much as the new customs regulations, to lead away from the original aim which was still officially maintained. The difference with respect to the Trianon policy in reality lies only in the fact that Napoleon here considered himself to be faithfully copying his adversary.

Great Britain

In Great Britain, in fact, the licensing system had acquired an immense range, culminating in 1810 with the granting of over 18,000 licences in a twelvemonth; and, according to almost unanimous information, it was carried through to such an extent that the greater part, not only of British foreign trade, but also of the maritime trade of the whole world, was carried on with British licences. But this did not prevent the Heligoland merchants, for instance, from feeling their operations restricted by not getting so many licences as they wished. The licence system placed practically the whole power over foreign trade in the hands of the British government, more particularly in the hands of the president of the Board of Trade. This very fact was enough to provoke incessant attacks on the whole system on the part of the opposition; and it also aroused great dislike on the part of the business world, which had already begun to regard as almost an axiom the incapacity of the state to judge commercial questions. It is true that on two different occasions, in 1805 and 1807, certain general exceptions had been granted from the current regulations, especially for importing foodstuffs and raw materials into Great Britain. But evidently the merchants considered—probably on the ground of dearly bought experience—that the commanding officers of the warships and privateers did not refrain from seizing other vessels than those which had licences in due form, and therefore continued to take out such licences even when, from a strictly legal point of view, that was superfluous.

In the opinion of the opposition, this state of affairs could not cease until the laws had been repealed from which the licences granted freedom in individual cases. Thus the opposition regarded the licensing system as a further inconvenience of the Orders in Council and as subject to the same condemnation as they. In the House of Commons the chief speakers of the opposition in economic questions, especially Alexander Baring, the junior partner in the famous firm of Baring Brothers &Co., Henry Brougham, the barrister, and Francis Horner, the originator and chairman of the famous Bullion Committee of 1810, were therefore indefatigable in their attacks on the licensing system. The first two named, together with the lawyer J. Phillimore, author of a pamphlet entitled Reflections on the Nature and Extent of the License Trade (1811), carried on the campaign outside Parliament too—Baring especially, by his pamphlet entitled An Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Council (1808). The attacks of the opposition, however, were met by the government with the assertion that licences would be quite as necessary, even if the Orders in Council and the blockade were entirely revoked, to serve as a form of dispensation from the prohibition of trading with the enemy. In 1812, for instance, Lord Castlereagh, then foreign secretary, declared that not a fifth of the licences were due to the Orders in Council; and as it was generally considered to be equally self-evident that this trade with the enemy should be forbidden by law and encouraged in reality, the government so far had the better of the argument.

But the opposition to the licences was nourished by the looseness with which the whole thing was managed by the incompetent administrators who were at that time guiding the destinies of Great Britain. In one case, for instance, two licences granting an otherwise refused right to import spirits were given out, according to the statement of the minister concerned, Rose, owing to a purely clerical error on the part of the official in the Board of Trade who made out the papers. One of these licences by itself was said to have brought in to the fortunate owner no less than £4,000; and Baring, 'perhaps the first merchant in the Kingdom, or perhaps in the world', declared that he would gladly pay £15,000 for such a licence. On another occasion it was alleged without contradiction in Parliament that 2,000 guineas had been paid for two licences to trade with the Isle-de-France (Mauritius) and Guadeloupe, and that bribes were openly given for the purpose, though not to the Board of Trade itself. That British licences were openly bought and sold, not only in Great Britain, but also all over the Continent, was a fact known to all the world; they were a mere trade commodity not only in Gothenburg and Norway but even in French maritime towns, such as Bordeaux and Amsterdam. The opposition, which naturally insisted upon the rights of Parliament as against the government, also objected—in the same way as was the case in Sweden during the recent war—that the licensing system gave the government revenue outside the control of Parliament and was therefore unconstitutional.

On the other side, the licences formed a manifest advantage, not merely for the British government but also for British external policy in general, by permitting a regulation of foreign trade according to circumstances, without the proclamation of more or less disputable principles of international law; and so far they accorded pretty well with the general attitude of horror displayed in British public life toward all doctrines and declarations of principle. It was really the licensing system that rendered possible the formal concession with regard to the original Orders in Council which was effected by the new Order in Council of April 26, 1809, in that the old regulations could in reality be maintained without being put on paper, simply by being made the condition for the granting of licences. This found quite open expression, for instance, in the letter which the Marquis of Wellesley, as foreign secretary, wrote to the new British Minister at Washington, Foster, in 1811, and in which, among other things, he says: 'You will perceive that the object of our system was not to crush the trade with the Continent, but to counteract an attempt to crush the British trade. Thus we have endeavoured to permit the Continent to receive as large a portion of commerce as might be practicable through Great Britain'—of which there is not a word in the only Order in Council of 1809 then in force—'and that all our subsequent regulations, and every modification of the system by new orders or modes of granting or withholding licences, have been calculated for the purpose of encouraging the trade of neutrals through Great Britain.'

The licences were thus, in the first place, a flexible means of carrying through the policy that had been marked out once for all. It is true that this did not prevent them, as we have seen, from coming to serve quite other purposes through the inefficiency and laxity of the officials; but these abuses did not imply that the British government had altogether lost its control over the licensing system. Thus, for instance, the ease with which the Norwegians obtained licences in 1809-11, despite the fact that the Dano-Norwegian monarchy was at war with Great Britain, was due to the British need of Norwegian timber. Later on, when pressure was regarded as desirable for political reasons—it was just at the time when Norway was suffering immensely from shortage of foodstuffs—the granting of licences in effect ceased entirely, although under the form of a claim for security to amounts which it was not possible to achieve (£3,000-4,000 per licence).

Even in its consistent form, however, the licence system led to embittered resistance in many quarters of Great Britain, especially in the seaports. In 1812 Hull, Sunderland, South Shields, Scarborough, Aberdeen, &c., overwhelmed Parliament with petitions against the licensing system, largely for reasons opposite to those usually alleged by the opposition. Here the attitude adopted was that the neutrals, with the object of maintaining connexion with the self-blockaded ports of the mainland, were admitted to too large a share in trade and shipping, and further that British subjects, contrary to the Navigation Act, were allowed to ship cargoes in neutral vessels. In this way these, petitions alleged, it was unintentionally made possible for Napoleon himself and his allies, under a neutral flag and with British licences, to take part in trade with impunity. Thus one example was cited when thirty-seven vessels were allowed, in 1810, to go without hindrance from Archangel to Holland; but this was due evidently to the usual carelessness in the application of the system. With regard to admitting foreign vessels and sailors, on the other hand, the government could point to the insufficiency of the British shipping for all purposes and to the advantage of penetrating to the markets of the Continent under a neutral flag when it could not be done under a British flag. This last was an idea which was strongly confirmed by Napoleon's view of the matter. On the whole, the British licences, despite their luxuriance of growth, remained, at least in principle, what they had been from the beginning, namely, a means of combining the formal British blockade of the Continent with the real mercantilist aims of the policy, as has been described in part I of this book. This found expression, among other things, in regulations which really placed a premium on exports, namely, in the form that the granting of a licence to import was made dependent on making exports to the same value, either in general or for certain goods; e.g., the granting of licence for the importation of wine in return for an engagement to export colonial goods. And although licences were often sold for high sums on the Continent (700 Rigsdaler in Norway, it is said, and 500 florins in Amsterdam) and in Great Britain itself were supplied by the state at such a considerable price as £13 or £14 apiece for individual licences, with the addition of a guinea for each licence when a large number were in question—on some occasions, however, higher charges did occur—yet the opposition, so far as I know, despite its repudiation of the whole system on constitutional grounds, never insinuated that the state was influenced by fiscal points of view, but only alleged abuses in favour of individuals. Even if one accepts the highest number of licences for a twelvemonth, about 18,000 for the year 1810, and the highest conceivable average amount per licence (i.e., £14, which is assuredly too high an estimate), the highest annual amount would only be about £250,000 or 6,250,000 francs.

FALSE SHIPS' PAPERS (BROUGHAM'S DESCRIPTION)

But the licences in Great Britain had also another object which, from the standpoint of the Continental System, was more important than all the matters we have just dealt with—namely, that of providing trade and shipping with an opportunity of circumventing Napoleon's commercial prohibitions without thereby being exposed to capture by British ships, which undoubtedly would have been the consequence if the formal British regulations had been applied. What had to be done was to avoid both Scylla and Charybdis; and on both sides the regulations had been brought to such a pitch that this was absolutely impossible without a dispensation. What the licences rendered possible, in this particular, was a completely systematic and commercially organized traffic with false ships' papers designed to show the continental authorities both the non-British origin of the goods and the departure of the vessels from non-British ports—a parallel to the case of smuggling. The best and most graphic description of the whole business is perhaps contained in a speech made by Brougham in the House of Commons on March 3, 1812, the relevant part of which may therefore be quoted in extenso. It will hardly be thought necessary to draw special attention to the priceless business letter in the forgery line which concludes this account.40

France

That part of this which made an impression upon Napoleon must above all have been the last-mentioned side of the licence system, for it evidently enabled the British to evade his blockading decrees with success. But the whole fashion of saying one thing, and meaning and doing another, accorded exquisitely with his general bent and created a possibility, which was particularly welcome under the then prevailing circumstances, of altering his régime in fact without formally repealing 'the fundamental law of the Empire' before the English had given way. It was only natural, therefore, that the licensing system on the British side should encourage imitation on the side of Napoleon. Accordingly, the Continental System during its last years developed into a huge system of jugglery on both sides, when neither side honestly applied its own regulations, but both broke them with a capriciousness that to some extent increased the sufferings of the already more than sufficiently harassed peoples.

But this external resemblance between the tactics of Great Britain and Napoleon concealed a fundamental internal dissimilarity. In this case there is an unusual amount of truth in the old dictum quum duo faciunt idem, non est idem. The licences created, or at least had the power to create, a perfectly consistent application of the policy that Great Britain wished to pursue, namely, the promotion of trade with the Continent. For Napoleon, on the other hand, every licence, his own no less than his opponent's, meant a breach in the self-blockade of the Continent and in the isolation of Great Britain, and thus drove one more nail into the coffin of the Continental System. For Napoleon the licences were an integral part of the new order of things, the other half of which was the Trianon régime; and like that, the licences on his side contributed greatly to the more and more dominant fiscalism, which was not the case, to any notable extent, in Great Britain. In this way the licensing system in Great Britain acquired its real importance for the Continental System by inveigling Napoleon into an imitation which removed him still further from his great aim.

Sometimes this fact finds very open expression in Napoleon's copious explanations of the licensing system, alternating with highly confusing and obscure accounts of its significance. 'In this place it is necessary to tell you again what you already understand,' runs an unusually explicatory letter to Eugene, Viceroy of Italy (September 19, 1810), 'namely, what is meant by a licence. A licence is a permission, accorded to a vessel that fulfils the conditions exacted by the said licence, to import or export a certain kind of merchandise specified in that licence. For those vessels the Berlin and Milan decrees are null and void.'

LICENCE DECREE JULY (25, 1810)

What an almost all-embracing range this suspension of the Continental decrees attained is shown by an express order, the so-called 'Licence decree,' of July 25, 1810, and also by a number of confirmatory measures adopted by Napoleon during the subsequent period. Thus it was laid down in the licence decree that beginning on August 1, 1810, no vessel bound for a foreign port might leave French ports without a licence signed by Napoleon's own hand. If the vessel was bound for any of the ports of the Empire, or was engaged in coasting traffic in the Mediterranean, a more general permit (acquit-à-caution) was required, but also a written bond which was not annulled until evidence could be furnished of the vessel's arrival at the French port. All vessels that were devoted to le grand commerce or la grande navigation were therefore obliged to have a licence; and for this procedure there was given the highly significant justification that no such traffic was possible without calling at a British port or at least being examined by the British—which, according to the Milan decree, involved 'denationalization' and confiscation. Despite the fact that both the Berlin and Milan decrees strictly forbade all intercourse with England and all calling at English ports, Napoleon now went so far as to make it a point of honour that French vessels should visit English waters, and go to London, even though they were under a neutral flag. 'Under this disguise England receives them, and I make laws for her owing to her pressing need of commercial intercourse.' It was not surprising that such a change of front, which in 1812, for instance, led to a licence for the importation of rice from London, befogged many people completely.

It goes without saying, however, that licences were not given for nothing, either for visits to England or for any other purpose. At first they had to be paid for, as a rule at very high prices. At an early period we hear of 30 or 40 napoleons (600 or 800 francs); at a later period 40 napoleons (800 francs) plus 30 francs per ton of wheat, and 15 francs per ton of rye, was regarded as cheap for exports from the Hanse Towns. Import licences for colonial goods from England fetched as much as 300 napoleons or 6,000 francs, that is to say, much higher amounts than the British licences. Nor did Napoleon make any secret of the fact that they were intended to yield him un revenu considérable.

OBLIGATION TO EXPORT

But further the licences were intended to serve Napoleon's aims in the sphere of trade policy. In this connexion the main thing was to encourage the exportation of French, and to some extent also Italian, industrial products and, in good years, foodstuffs from both countries, as well as from Danzig and other granaries. In exchange for this there was granted, as a rule, the importation of colonial goods, which was simultaneously regulated by the Trianon policy, either generally or with special reference to Levantine and American products. But there were also stricter rules where nothing was to be brought back to France except ship-building materials or precious metals, and specie, which were in constant request, and which Napoleon, in consonance with his well-known views, was always seeking to draw from England. Thus from 1809 on there was a long series of varying types of licence, which differed widely in detail, but do not offer many points of interest. One of the most significant types is the combined one which permitted vessels to take corn from German ports in Napoleon's empire to Dunkirk and thence to England, provided the corn was discharged in England and naval stores were taken as return freight to Dunkirk, where French wine, silks, and manufactures had to be taken on board and conveyed to Hamburg. One of the most stringent conditions for licences was that imports into France, and to some extent also into Italy, of whatever kind they might be—apart from foodstuffs during years of famine, as in 1812—required from the importing vessel a return cargo of French goods from France or Italian goods from Italy of at least the same value. Such return freight was particularly silk and other French textiles, but also wine and brandy, and, in good years, natural produce, especially from Italy. All this was to be in proportions which varied a great deal from time to time, but were usually determined in great detail. This very far-reaching system, which also had something, though on a smaller scale, corresponding to it on the British side, as has already been mentioned,41 had developed from a regulation introduced into the French customs ordinance of 1803 as a kind of punishment for vessels whose papers were not above suspicion in respect of the innocent origin of their cargo. This even applied to incorporated territories, such as the Hanse Towns, when importing to 'the old departments'.

It may be said at once that this attempt on the part of Napoleon to transform the Continental System from a gigantic plan of blockade against Great Britain to an in itself less note-worthy method of augmenting the exports of France, led to an almost complete fiasco. The goods were taken on board, of course, but as their importation was prohibited in England, and as, moreover, they were not in a position to compete with British manufactures, there could be no sale. And it is in the very nature of things that the method of circumventing such export ordinances must be still more varied than in regard to obstacles in the way of imports, and the dodges invented were all the more numerous. On the whole, it may be regarded as a general rule that purely coercive laws in the sphere of economics have far fewer possibilities of being made effective in a positive direction than in a negative one. In most cases, in fact, it is almost impossible that the positive law can effect anything more than the external forms of economic transaction, while the negative regulation or prohibition can much sooner make the transaction impossible both in substance and in form. Of course, goods were exported when their exportation was ordered; but as it was difficult to fix the quality of the goods in the law, the consequence was that people bought up every conceivable kind of rubbish—articles long since out of fashion or useless from the very start—in the French idiom 'nightingales' (rossignols), which sing only by night,—which could be purchased for a song and then priced at any figure whatever. Under these circumstances, of course, there was less chance than ever of effecting any real imports of goods into England, and it was stated openly, for instance, in the French Council of Commerce and Industry in 1812, and was for that matter generally known, that the goods were simply thrown into the sea. All this held good of that part of Napoleon's policy which to some degree stood in connexion with the Continental System, namely, the trade with England. With regard to the countries incorporated or allied with the empire, the possibilities were probably greater, inasmuch as the vessels could be controlled on their arrival with the French goods; but obviously all this was valueless as a weapon in the struggle with the enemy.

FRENCH SHIPPING MONOPOLY

Finally, also, the licensing system was elaborated into a purely protectionist measure with regard to French shipping. In his letter to Decrès, the naval minister, written on the same day as the issue of the Milan decree, Napoleon had already prescribed that all non-French vessels should be detained in his ports; and now the licensing system was adopted to the end of creating a practically complete monopoly for the French mercantile marine. Especially openhearted in this matter is the Emperor's commentary on the licence decree of July 25, contained in a letter to his lieutenant in Holland after the incorporation of that country, the arch-treasurer Prince Lebrun (August 20, 1810). After observing that no vessel, according to the first article of the decree, could depart to a foreign port without licence, he goes on to say: 'The article 'applies to all kinds of vessels, French, neutral or foreign; that is to say, with the exception [sic] that I do not grant licences to other than French vessels. In two words, I will not hear of any neutral vessel, and as a matter of fact there is in reality no such thing; for they are all vessels which violate the blockade and pay tribute to England. As to the word foreign, that means foreign to France. Thus foreign vessels cannot trade with France or leave our ports, because there are no neutrals.' According to a previously cited letter to Eugene, of September 19,42 Napoleon develops still further the idea, in that, with the sole exception of naturalized captured vessels, he requires that the vessels shall even be built in France. It is true that all this did not apply without exception, for in some individual cases licences were granted to vessels of allied or neutral states. Likewise the Hanse Towns, which belonged to Napoleon, Danzig, and towns in Italy, received licences, though only upon payment of unusually high fees; as a rule, however, allies were excluded as rigorously as neutrals. Especially hard did the system strike against France's most faithful ally, Denmark, who saw all her vessels in the ports of Napoleon seized and detained, despite endless negotiations and the support of Davout; and when the vessels were finally released, in the spring of 1812, at which time there were still eighty left, their release was conditioned upon exportation of huge quantities of French silks, which was an absolute impossibility. We obtain the right background for these tactics when we take into consideration the fact that Denmark had also to submit to supplying other vessels for the transport of corn to Holland and at the same time to place officers and sailors at Napoleon's disposal for the naval expedition that he was then equipping on the Scheldt against England.43

Thus there can be no doubt that the Continental System had missed its mark in several decisive respects. Instead of hitting the enemy, it had partly shot past him and become a means of promoting the interests of France—correctly or incorrectly conceived—at the expense of her own helpers in the struggle against Great Britain. The customs policy proper had had this tendency from the very beginning; and its later development, which continued along the same lines, will be described in connexion with the effects of the system on the Continent, in part IV of this book. To what extent all this had driven Napoleon into the very course that the British in reality aimed at from start to finish, is shown with unusual clearness by a statement made in the autumn of 1811 by General Walterstorff, the Danish minister in Paris at the time, to the effect that France had no other trade except with England and, of course, wished to keep that for herself. Here we find the position described in words almost the same as those employed by the British ministers with regard to the object of their policy.44 So far the success of the system was almost incontestable—for Great Britain.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TRIANON AND FONTAINEBLEAU POLICY IN OPERATION (1810-12)

ADMINISTRATION OF NEW POLICY

FROM what has been said in the foregoing chapter it is by no means to be inferred that the Continental System had failed altogether. The Fontainebleau policy was directed primarily against the exports of British manufactures; and here Napoleon was in deadly earnest.

But there was no sharp line of demarcation between the prohibitory measures directed against Great Britain and the orders relating to the importation of colonial goods, which were, in Napoleon's view, half repressive and half fiscal; nor could any such line be found owing to the lack of clearness in men's grasp of the matter. It is quite impossible, therefore, to keep them distinct in this account. The administrative organs were largely the same for both, and both were violent and detested by the people; but there can be no doubt that the fiscal measures formed beyond comparison the most effective half of the new system, because the desire for the goods always made the people comparatively willing to pay, if only they could get the goods by so doing. It is true that the competition with the smugglers came far from putting an end to their traffic, that is to say, to continue the same terminology, far from giving the state the monopoly of importing prohibited colonial goods; but in any case it brought substantial sums into the public treasuries. Napoleon's customs revenues alone rose to 105,900,000 francs in the period from the Trianon tariff to the close of 1811, this as compared with only 11,600,000 francs in 1809; and the auctions of confiscated goods, together with the licence fees, brought in far more, to say nothing of what the vassal states contrived to make. We have at present no complete survey of the total yield of the new policy to the government treasuries, but a general idea of the whole situation is given by the fact that, according to Thiers, the auctions alone during the remaining months of 1810 yielded a cash return of almost 150,000,000 francs. In the contemplation of such figures it is not difficult to understand the magnitude that the fiscal side of the policy was destined to attain; and, indeed, it was to become more and more marked during each of the remaining years.

The corner-stone of the new building, visible to all the world, was formed by the incorporation with France of the Hanse Towns and Oldenburg and the rest of the North Sea coast. This took place about the turn of the year 1810-11, and brought it about that the new measures, both administrative and military, struck by far the hardest on the North Sea. It is true that from the beginning this involved a great limitation in effectiveness, inasmuch as the centre of gravity of the British continental traffic had already been moved definitely from there to the Baltic coasts and Gothenburg.

The special regulations that were issued in the early part of October concerning the payment of customs duties for goods between the coast and the old Rees-Travemünde line are of less interest; and their relations to the Trianon tariff are not clear in all details. Of the greatest importance, rather, are the new judicial system—if such a fair-sounding word can be used—and the new military barrier.

CUSTOMS COURTS AND THE MILITARY CORDON

It was on the North Sea coast that the new customs courts were of the most importance, and it was there that they proceeded with all the cruelty and contempt for private rights that invariably characterize an unscrupulous police. The new customs staff, which is represented as a rabble scraped together from different countries, penetrated by day and night into dwelling houses, and espionage flourished more than ever. With grim irony Eudel, the former head of the customs system in Hamburg who was tolerably well hated by everybody, was able, according to Bourrienne, to prophesy that he and his greencoats would be positively missed: 'Hitherto,' he said, 'they have seen only roses.' Rist, on whose evidence what has been just said is partly based, furnishes the following information of greater value:

During one fortnight in 1812 Le Grand Prévôt in Hamburg pronounced one hundred and twenty sentences of six months' imprisonment, all for offences against the blockade decree. The result was that in Hamburg the prison became so crowded that a hundred prisoners had to be conveyed to the galleys of Antwerp, while at Bremen the prison conditions were so bad that 22½ per cent. of the prisoners died. Death sentences were also passed and executed, as Rist correctly states in the passage just cited, although no justification for this was to be found in the Fontainebleau decree. The whole system became still more detestable for the reason that the licensing system was its background. Bourrienne states that the father of a family came near being shot in 1811 for having imported a small sugar-loaf in the Elbe Department, possibly at the very moment when Napoleon was signing licences for the importation of a million sugar-loaves. Moreover, in Hamburg the system gave rise to perfectly meaningless intrigues in conjunction with the usual lawless robbery on the part of the functionaries; all of which was especially troublesome owing to the fact that Holstein was indissolubly united with Hamburg, and after the annexation of the Hanse Towns people suddenly found the border of the Empire running between Altona and Hamburg. Consequently, the most elementary economic functions had to come to a standstill owing to the prohibitive legislation. This was carried to such an extent that the Holstein peasants were at first not permitted to take back over the frontier the money they had received in payment for the foodstuffs that they had sold, because it was against the law to take money out of the country.

Alongside this new system of justice on the basis of the Fontainebleau decree, Napoleon now fell back on his military resources to a greater extent than ever before. Masséna's army corps, now under the command of Oudinot, was stationed on a line from Boulogne along the coasts of Brabant and Holland, with its strongest division at Emden to maintain the connexion with the Hanse Towns. Next came Davout's corps, which, according to Thiers, was 'the finest, most reliable, and best organized' in the army, 'the invincible third corps,' the only corps in the whole of Napoleon's army which now, during the short interval of peace upon the mainland, was kept upon a war footing. It consisted of three divisions, each composed of five regiments of infantry divided into four battalions (sixty battalions of infantry in all), with eighty cannons; and in addition to these there was one division of cuirassiers and one division of light cavalry, a great siege train, and finally a flotilla of gunboats stationed in the mouths of the rivers. The extreme outpost of this line was General Rapp's force at Danzig. In a letter of September 28, 1810, to Davout, the mainstay of this organization, Napoleon gave detailed instructions as to how the different generals with their forces were to be distributed, and he expressly declared that the two divisions stationed along the German North Sea coast had as their sole task the prevention of smuggling. Moreover, considerable fortifications were made along the coast with the same purpose in the last months of 1810, after a plan to capture Heligoland without maritime forces had had to be abandoned.

CONFISCATIONS

As was to be expected, the execution of the new decrees encountered far greater obstacles in the vassal states than in the incorporated territories. According to French opinion, the Trianon decree, in the beginning at least, remained a dead letter in all the states of the Confederation of the Rhine, except Baden. Prussia, like Saxony, made an attempt to except raw materials from the tariff; and the somewhat more independent states, such as Russia, Austria, and Sweden, never, so far as is known, introduced the tariff as a whole. It seems as if it was just this passive resistance in August and September 1810 that contributed to bring about the issue of the Fontainebleau decree in October. The great decree (for France) that usually bears this name, dated October 18 or possibly 19, was preceded a few days before (October 14) by a decree for the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt and followed by corresponding laws promulgated by the other states of the Confederation of the Rhine, as well as by Denmark and Switzerland. The most notorious and dramatic was Napoleon's intervention in Frankfurt. Although that town, and the Grand Duchy created for the last electoral prince of Mainz that bore the name of the town, was nominally a sovereign state, on October 17 and 18 it was suddenly entered by two French regiments of infantry without the Grand Duke being so much as informed of the event. All the gates were occupied and artillery was stationed on the great square, after which the decree was posted up and an order was given that a declaration should be made of all colonial and English goods. French customs officials searched all warehouses, sealed all vaults and seized all books and letters; in fact, the whole of the great trade movement was stopped. For several days there was a violent agitation, as the general belief was that all the goods were going to be confiscated; but the excitement abated somewhat when the colonial goods were released, by a new decree of November 8, on payment of duty according to the Trianon tariff. As usual, malversation occurred on a large scale; but none the less Darmstädter, the German historian, reckons the yield to the French treasury at 9,000,000 francs.

The fact that the direct intervention of France thus caused the other states to lose the profit served to stimulate the measures of those states themselves; and externally, at least, they began to show great zeal in obeying the new decrees, so that colonial goods were seized everywhere. In Leipzig, which corresponded in eastern Germany to Frankfurt in the west, there was an unusual amount of colonial goods in the autumn of 1810, as has previously been mentioned;45 but the great interest of the Saxon government in maintaining the fairs evidently prevented very forcible measures there against goods that were always in such great request. Among the most striking measures are those taken in Holstein, which had become one of the principal regions for the storage of colonial goods. In order to get them into his hands, Napoleon now conceded that for a limited time they might be imported into Hamburg on payment of the duties corresponding to the Trianon tariff; and at the same time he caused the Danish government to impose corresponding duties within his territory, in order that the owners should not be tempted to retain their goods. From Napoleon's point of view this move turned out better than most of the others. The final date had time after time to be moved forward until the spring of 1811, so that the enormous stores could be completely exported; and the French treasury made 19,700,000 francs on the payments in kind alone, and 42,500,000 francs altogether. Rist describes how during the last weeks the highways from Tönning were never free of loaded carts, inasmuch as half the peasants of Holstein had deserted their fields. Thousands were lost, many thousands were stolen, and hundreds of cart-loads waited all night at Hamburgerberg for the gates of the town to be opened. Cotton lay all about the fields like snow.

For the states of the interior there was a special difficulty in the treatment of colonial goods that had already passed through another state in Napoleon's sphere of power and had there paid duty according to the Trianon tariff. The method adopted at first, namely, the exaction of the duty in every country, was evidently fatal for intermediary states such as Frankfurt; and gradually an arrangement was made whereby the tariff was generally applied as a tax on consumption, not as a transit duty, but with freedom for goods that had once paid the duty. In this connexion, however, there was the usual difficulty created by the systematic measures of Prussia and Sweden (Swedish Pomerania) calculated to make the Continental System illusory, despite the most abject terms in the ordinances issued. Prussia allowed payment at par in government securities, which stood at 59.5 per cent.; and when the goods afterwards went through to other quarters with Prussian certificates of payment, the measures once again missed their aim. This went on until in the spring and summer of 1811 the Prussian certificates were disapproved and a fresh violent raid was made on what had been let through in the meantime. In consequence of this, the results of the new policy in Central Europe proper could not emerge clearly until the middle of 1811.

Owing to the confiscations which took place when non-declared colonial goods were discovered, great auctions were arranged—preferably in towns which lay at some distance from the great smuggling places, because the prices were highest there. Foremost among these was Antwerp, but of considerable importance also were Frankfurt, Cologne, Mainz, Strassburg, Milan, Venice and other towns near the old frontier of France. At these auctions the colonial trade was provided with goods and thus given a constant source of supply alongside the smuggled goods and the duty-paid imports; and by this means there was created a possibility, besides smuggling, of purchasing the goods at a rate lower than the foreign price plus the customs duty.

AUTOS-DA-FÉ

What we have here dealt with are the colonial goods pure and simple. British industrial products, of course, according to the Fontainebleau decree were under all circumstances condemned to destruction; and from this rule Napoleon never, so far as is known, made an exception. But it would be a great mistake to conclude from this that the blockade was more effective in this point than in the other. On the contrary, quite the reverse is true, and the reason is the total absence of pecuniary interest, public and private, in obedience to the latter regulations. The public burning of goods, as ordered by the decree, was a genuine auto-da-fé (act of faith), which was performed publicly to the accompaniment of military music and in the presence of all the high dignitaries of the place. But the ceremony was just as great whatever was the real value of the goods burnt at the stake; and against the possibilities of malversation that this offered the virtue of Napoleon's officials could naturally make no resistance. It is improbable, indeed, that the autos-da-fé were 'comedies', as Darmstädter calls them, everywhere; but the fact that they were so in a large number of cases is shown by the accessible material, and was also admitted in cautious terms even by Napoleon himself. This was especially the case in Frankfurt, where at the first inventory, in November 1810, there was set to work an imperial commission consisting, among others, of French officers. When rolls of gold coins were placed in a drawer especially set apart for the purpose, the goods became Swiss or Saxon instead of British; and the goods which actually came to the stake were regarded as having a value of only 200,000 francs, although they were officially valued at 1,200,000 francs. At the renewed purgation at Frankfurt, after the Prussian certificates of origin had been condemned in the spring of 1811, one firm had a whole warehouse full of British goods; but here again the same story was repeated. A Jew from Friedberg by the name of Cassella was made a scapegoat, and only his British cottons were burnt. On this occasion the mayor wrote with refreshing candour: 'When they were spread out, there seemed to be a lot of cloth, and they could give the impression of a great quantity at the burning'—which, in his opinion, was all that was required, as the object must be 'to ward off unpleasantness from France, not to ruin our own population'. For other places we have less detailed statements, although a number of figures are available. It is, however, impossible to check these figures with reference to their authenticity for the autos-da-fé in North Germany. A number of them, which are given in Servières' account for the Hanse Towns and in M. Schäfer's account for Bremen, show the total value of goods burnt to be about 4,500,000 francs. But in addition to these many burnings took place for which we have no figures; and besides it is very difficult to determine the truth behind the official statements.

Nevertheless, these burnings of British goods formed the most striking and amazing feature of all in the new system, as the conflagrations, especially during the last months of 1810 and the beginning of 1811, blazed in hundreds of towns from one end to the other of the territory of Napoleon and his allies, with the sole exception of Denmark. Undoubtedly these blighting scenes produced a tremendous though altogether exaggerated impression of the Emperor's dogged determination to follow out his plans for the economic overthrow of England, regardless of anything else; and consequently they were a very cunning display of power. Even now it is impossible to read the Moniteur without being impressed by the incessantly recurring inventories and details concerning British goods committed to the flames, sometimes in a dozen different places on a single day. The French Chambers of Commerce and Industry naturally struck up what one of them appositely calls 'a concert of blessings' that the Emperor in this unusually direct way had freed them from an overwhelming competitor, although it is true, as the German historian Zeyss has shown, that some of these blessings were conferred in consequence of orders from high places.46

NEW COMMERCIAL ROUTES (1810-12)

The most remarkable consequence of the new system was a new arrangement of the trade routes, which took place in two directions. In the first place, the sea route was again brought officially into favour by the licence system, as it had not been since the Berlin decree. This change evidently was mainly important for France herself, where smuggling had always encountered the greatest difficulties; and it put an end, for instance, to the prosperity which Strassburg had enjoyed as a staple for French imports, both legitimate and illegitimate.47 In the second place, and this was the most important, the whole of this trade in colonial goods and British manufactures shifted from Central Europe proper—the regions of the Rhine, Weser, Elbe and Oder—to Eastern Europe and the Danube basin. Beginning with the summer of 1811, there was a practical cessation in the supply of British goods to the Leipzig fairs, and even colonial goods declined there to an insignificant proportion of what they had been. Curiously enough, Frankfurt suffered less, comparatively speaking. This was evidently due to the fact that a genuine good-will to obey the system existed to a considerably greater extent in Saxony than in the other states of the Confederation of the Rhine; and this, in turn, is partly explained by the fact that the great and flourishing textile industries of Saxony profited by the measures against British competition, while Frankfurt in particular had nothing similar to gain by those measures. But at all events, this development shows an increasing efficacy of the blockade in great parts of Germany. The question naturally arises, however, why Leipzig did not take advantage of the licence system with regard to colonial goods; but the answer seems to be that imports through the Baltic ports could not penetrate to Leipzig after the Prussian certificates of payment had been disapproved. But this does not imply any general success for the new policy in Germany, so long as the Baltic coast could only be barred ineffectively. Consequently, the chief effect, in fact, still was to cut off Western Europe itself, while making Germany the purveyor of smuggled goods.

Bacher's Account

The main thing, however, is the changed trade route which Napoleon thus brought about. With unusual insight and openness the course of developments was predicted as early as October 2, 1810, in a report (printed by Schmidt in his work on the Grand Duchy of Berg) by Bacher, Napoleon's minister to the Confederation of the Rhine. This seems to give such an excellent picture of the situation that it may be reproduced, as regards its main part, instead of a special account. If the reader will go to the trouble of placing a map of Central Europe before him, Bacher's reasoning will prove extremely instructive.

In other words, the fact was that trade had moved outside Napoleon's jurisdiction. Vienna, in particular, now obtained a great part of the central position in the trade of the Continent that had previously belonged to Leipzig. At an even earlier stage the Jewish fierante of East Europe had sought on the coast of the Baltic, at Königsberg and Riga, the British goods which they or their customers would not do without, and had not been satisfied with the substitutes in the way of Saxon and Swiss manufactures that Leipzig had to offer. They now found a staple in Vienna. To that place the goods went by two routes, a northern one through the Prussian and Russian Baltic ports round the Grand Duchy of Warsaw to Brody in Galicia (on Austrian territory, quite close to the Russian frontier); and a southern one to the same point (Brody), at first from Odessa, that is to say, across the Black Sea, and after the outbreak of the Franco-Russian war, via Constantinople and Saloniki to Lemberg. But this connexion was by no means limited to supplying Eastern Europe. On the contrary, it also became, just as Bacher had predicted, the starting-point of a transport of goods through Bavaria, which permitted the duty-free transit of colonial goods and even passed British manufactures, to the rest of South Germany and Switzerland, and making possible their smuggling into France.

But it is obvious that these roundabout routes and licensing fees or smuggling expenses and bribes were bound to increase the cost of transport enormously; and so far this new policy also threw serious obstacles in the way of British trade, although these were relative and not absolute hindrances, as the Continental System in its original form was intended to create. Tooke gives a number of interesting examples of the immense cost of freight during the years 1809-12 in comparison with the year 1837, when his book was written.48 For instance, wheat freights were 50 shillings per quarter, as against 4s. 6d.; hemp freights were £30 per ton, as against £2 10s.; timber freights were £10 per load, as against £1, &c. Silk had to go round-about ways from Italy, e.g., from Bergamo in one case via Smyrna, and in another case via Archangel (sic), so that the transport took one year and two years, respectively; and when it went through France, the expense was £100 per bale, besides the freight from Havre to England. Tooke particularly states that the freights to and from France were enormous. For a vessel of little more than one hundred tons the freight and the French licence might amount to no less than £50,000 for a trip from Calais to London and back to Calais, which for indigo meant a freight of 4s. 6d. per English pound, as compared with 1d. (that is to say one fifty-fourth) in 1837; and the gross freight for a ship whose total value was £4,000 was £80,000 for a trip from Bordeaux to London and back.

Baltic Trade

All this shows clearly how important the Baltic trade, side by side with the Mediterranean trade, had become since the North Sea blockade had increased in efficiency. British shipping passed more and more to the Baltic; and it was there, accordingly, that Napoleon had to exert his greatest pressure—a fact, indeed, which found expression in repeated warnings issued to the Baltic powers in the course of the summer. But it was not until the autumn of 1810 that matters became really critical; and the events that then occurred had far-reaching consequences. A British commercial flotilla of six hundred vessels under different neutral flags, with a cargo worth £8,000,000 or, £9,000,000 had been delayed at Gothenburg by unfavourable weather until August (according to Lord Bathurst's statement in the House of Lords in 1812, it was only until June) and had then passed into the Baltic in September in order to proceed to Swedish, Russian, and Prussian ports. Napoleon now saw in this a possibility of striking a great blow against this important part of English trade, and in October he overwhelmed the different governments, partly through Champagny, his foreign minister, and partly by direct appeals, with the most urgent reminders to confiscate all these vessels, which, in the words of Champagny, were 'wandering about like the fragments of a scattered army'. Threats that Napoleon himself would send people to confiscate the cargoes, if the governments failed to do so on their own account, alternated with highly-coloured pictures of the economic crisis in England and of the certainty of her submission within a year as a consequence of complete confiscation; and also, finally, inducements were offered by reference to the profits which would be reaped by confiscation.

In Mecklenburg Napoleon considered that he had effected his will by this means, namely, in the shape of the expulsion of the vessels; and Prussia also gave way, although Clérembault, the Emperor's own consul at Königsberg, largely made seizures illusory, as we know. The question now was about Russia; but here Napoleon met with resistance. Emperor Alexander obstinately refused to have all nominally neutral vessels confiscated, and, besides, denied that more than about sixty vessels (the French ambassador at St. Petersburg, Caulain-court, gave the figure for loaded vessels since the middle of September, according to Russian allegations, as only fifteen) had arrived at his ports; and this fact he tried to explain by stating that some of them had returned and others had discharged at Gothenburg and other Swedish ports. This latter statement may indeed be nearly correct. In consequence of all this, it is apparent that Napoleon's action had failed in the main, although evidently a good deal had been seized in Russia. A memorandum from British merchants in 1816 gave such a high amount (as far as we can judge, much too high) as 140 cargoes with a value of £1,500,000. In Sweden, where smaller practical results than ever were to be attained—so unreservedly was Swedish policy based on the support of the British fleet under Saumarez—there was effected in the spring of 1811 at Karlshamn, by accident, a great seizure of over a hundred vessels under the flags not only of Denmark and Prussia, but also of Hamburg, Papenburg, &c., in the belief that they really were cargoes of the first two nationalities. But when they proved to be British property, of an estimated value of £500,000, a settlement was effected whereby the goods were treated as Swedish and then by fictitious purchase returned to their former owners, so that the British here lost nothing. The heat with which Napoleon had pursued his course of action against Russia with regard to the British vessels—among other things, the demands laid down in a personal letter addressed to the Emperor Alexander—largely contributed to widen the gulf between the two allies, and was a contributory cause to the breach in the sphere of trade war which was practically brought about on the last day of 1810 by the famous Russian customs ukase, which, as has been mentioned before,49 was directed against French goods. In the course of 1811 the split was steadily increased by Alexander's more and more openly displayed good-will towards British vessels, which now came in without hindrance in large flotillas and discharged their goods on the Russian coast. According to a letter written by Napoleon at the end of August 1811, 150 vessels had in this way been received in Russian ports under the American flag.

Gothenburg

The importance of Gothenburg for the trade of Europe has neither before nor since been so great as during the two years 1810 and 1813. The fact that the two intervening years showed less commercial activity was due partly to French and Danish captures, and partly also to the general decline in the Baltic trade under the pressure of a scarcity of corn and Napoleon's Russian campaign; and, moreover, the more and more open connexions between Great Britain and Russia manifestly diminished the need for Swedish intermediacy. In September 1810, Axel Pontus von Rosen, the Governor of Gothenburg, and the most original, humorous and energetic Swedish actor on the stage of the Continental System in this exciting time, describes how the roadstead presented an appearance such as it had never had since the Creation, with 19 British men-of-war and 1,124 merchantmen lying at anchor; and in the course of one single day, when the wind veered round to the east, several hundred vessels sailed away at the same time. The instructions given to von Rosen in the following November explained that in the case of vessels with cargoes belonging to Swedish subjects, and flying the American or other acceptable flag, 'His Majesty does not require you to recur to extremities of diligence, but on the contrary to suppress facts and facilitate traffic as far as you may do so in consonance with necessary precautions and without compromising your position.' Imports which had quadrupled between 1807 and 1809, quintupled in 1810. Especially flourishing, of course, was the entrepôt trade in colonial goods. Thus the exports of raw sugar were 14,500,000 pounds (about twice as much as the year before), and of coffee 4,500,000 pounds, not reckoning what was conveyed to other places in Sweden and from there to foreign countries. A native of the town who returned in 1811, after an absence of fifteen years, declared that he looked in vain for traces of the past and that he moved in an unknown world. But Gothenburg under the Continental System has as yet no historian. In the Baltic itself it was Hanö and the little loading-place of Matvik on the Swedish south coast, in the province of Blekinge (by some writers erroneously located in Finland), which, like Gothenburg on the west coast, was made, by the instructions of the Swedish government, both a base for the British squadron and an emporium for colonial goods and manufactures. But, for that matter, Sweden as a whole formed a great point of transit for British and American trade, partly to Russia and partly to the southern ports of the Baltic, because that route was regarded as more secure from French and Danish privateers than the direct route.50

CHAPTER V.

THE BRITISH CRISIS OF 1810-12

How did the trade of Great Britain fare under the pressure of the events on the Continent described in the last chapter? With regard to the exports of manufactures, one might surmise a decline beforehand, for sales via the North Sea coast were made distinctly more difficult, and the roundabout route via the Baltic coast could not fail either to make the goods dearer for the consumer, and thus diminish sales, or, alternatively, to lower the price for the producer. As regards the trade in colonial goods, on the other hand, it was not clear, a priori, that the conditions would be greatly altered, inasmuch as the increased control and the new duties were counterbalanced by the extensive imports involved by the Trianon policy and the licences.

Nor, if one looks at the actual course of events, does that give any certain points d'appui for the connexion between cause and effect, a thing which must always to a great extent have to be solved by theoretical reasoning. At the first glance, it is true, that connexion might seem fairly obvious. For the fact is that the economic boom in England was brought to an end by a severe crisis in July and August 1810. The purely commercial difficulties, with bankruptcies occurring to an extraordinary extent among merchants, formed the beginning of this; but they abated in some degree later on in the summer of 1811 and still more from February 1812. On the other hand, the great lack of employment and the profound distress which somewhat later made its appearance, especially in the cotton industry and among workers, still continued during the greater part of 1812 and in their turn brought about serious disturbances—in particular, the 'Luddite riots', with the wholesale destruction of looms from November 1811. It was, therefore, only natural that in these events, combined with the heavy depreciation of British currency, Napoleon should see the long-desired fruit of his protracted struggle against the foundations of the enemy's economic existence. But the very fact that the crisis broke out not solely in England, but quite as much in France, and not solely in those countries, but also in Amsterdam, the Hanse Towns, Prussia, and Switzerland, and above all in New York, shows how complicated the whole connexion was. From the standpoint of the general effects of the Continental System on the economic life of the different countries, this question belongs to part IV; but the most palpable side of the question must be anticipated here.51

Undoubtedly it was a peculiar combination of circumstances that worked together. In comparison with the systematic policy of economic blockade and the comparatively limited military results of the recent war, the Napoleonic wars exhibited a considerably greater uncertainty both in the execution of the blockade and in its range. The licensing system and the uncertainty of the customs policy against which complaints were so often raised in France, on the one side, and Napoleon's lightning conquests on the Continent and Great Britain's colonial acquisitions, on the other, could not fail to give rise to dislocations and consequently to speculative enterprises which, within the department of economic life affected by it, namely, foreign trade, transcended anything we know in our own time. So far the existence of a very general crisis during the years 1810-11 is fully explicable; and so far it has no direct connexion with the Continental System, but only the indirect connexion that follows from the influence of the Continental System in bringing about general unrest in the world. At all events, it is very obvious that we here have to do with effects that did not strike Great Britain alone or even specially.

Next, as regards the purely British crisis, what stands out as a principal cause is the all but inevitable rebound from the huge speculation, especially in South America, but also in the West Indies and the Iberian peninsula, which has been described previously;52 that is to say, it is still a phenomenon having no direct connexion with the Continental System. In all probability it was further accelerated, as the British opposition always maintained, by an exaggerated granting of credit, caused by too extensive an issue of notes (inflation). The course of events appears to have been somewhat as follows: First of all, exporters could not get payment from their South American buyers. As early as August 1, 1810, we hear of five business houses in Manchester, with aggregate liabilities amounting to what was for that time the stupendous sum of £2,000,000, that had come to grief in this way; and at the end of the year we hear of bankruptcies in Manchester occurring not merely daily but even hourly. The inability of exporters to honour bills drawn upon them by manufacturers involved the latter also, particularly the Scotch ones, in the crisis; and later the confusion spread to the credit-giving banking houses and through them, in ever-widening circles, not only to the cotton trade but also to the hardware trade. Excessive speculations on the South American market also affected prospects of the future, inasmuch as not only was there no payment for goods already sold, but also new sales were largely rendered impossible. So far a completely adequate explanation of the dislocation is given by the South American trade. But to this there was added, as from March 1811, a new factor, which likewise lacked any direct connexion with the Continental System, namely, the unusually successful strangling of Anglo-American trade which the United States set going through the passage of the Non-importation Act. Finally, it is a self-evident matter that the sufferings caused by the crisis, and the deep traces it left among the working population of Great Britain, were largely due to the fact that the country was in the midst of the sweeping transformation to which Arnold Toynbee gave the name of 'Industrial Revolution'.

But if it is clear that many factors independent of the Continental System were at work, it would nevertheless be a great mistake to regard the crisis as entirely uninfluenced by the policy of Napoleon. Externally the situation was, almost to the extent that the Emperor himself might have desired, one that must inevitably have led to 'the conquering of England by excess'. The year 1810 was characterized by unprecedented imports of raw materials and colonial products. This appears from the following table, which gives a convenient summary of the gross imports of those goods from the outbreak of war in 1803 to the final peace in 1815. (See next page.)

This table shows that the figures for 1810, with only two exceptions, are in general much higher than the even high figures for 1809; and in the two most important items, cotton and sugar, they are higher than in any other year during the whole period. The explanation of this fact is stated to be, first, that the payment for exports to South America, so far as there was any payment, was made in colonial goods; and, secondly, that the great warehouses at the London docks had led to a great storing of all the products of the world and consequently to extensive speculation in them by middlemen. It is self-evident, too, that a great and expressly acknowledged part in this development was played by the trade with the United States, which was quite unimpeded in 1810, as well as by the conquest of the French and Spanish colonies, and also, so far as wool is concerned, by the British successes on the Iberian peninsula. When a stoppage of sales took place, therefore, the situation had unusually large chances of becoming serious.

Accordingly, there followed in rapid succession during the summer and autumn of 1810 the events we all know about. As early as the spring (April and May) the signs of a crisis had really shown themselves in France, a crisis which might possibly have reacted on Great Britain; but far more important was the incorporation of Holland, in the beginning of July, by which, according to British evidence, there was, at least for the moment, a complete interruption of the trade between the two countries which had been going on throughout the reign of King Louis. At the beginning of August there followed the Trianon tariff;in October, the intensified blockade of the German North Sea coast, the Fontainebleau decree, and the persecution of British and colonial goods in all Napoleon's vassal states; and at the same time six hundred trading vessels were wandering around the Baltic. It was also in the sphere of colonial trade that the first blow occurred, in that one of the foremost dealers in West Indian products became insolvent and dragged down with him his bankers, who in their turn dragged after them the provincial banks with which they were associated. A meeting of London merchants and representatives of the Scottish manufacturing districts in February 1811, summed up in proud and somewhat exaggerated terms the situation in its connexion with the Continental System by saying that Great Britain had become 'the emporium of the trade, not only of the Peninsular but also of the Brazils, of Spanish settlements in South America, of Santo Domingo, the conquered colonies of Guadaloupe, Martinique, &c., but even of countries under the direct influence of the enemy', inasmuch as the latter had wished to take advantage of the protection of British justice and the honesty of British merchants. 'The measures of the enemy having been especially directed toward preventing the exportation of the immense quantities of merchandize of all descriptions thus accumulated, the consequences are that the goods became a burthen.' The following remarks of the FrenchAmerican, Simond, upon his visit to the West Indian docks in August 1811, are in full accord with this: 'At present...the giant receives, but sends nothing away. The warehouses are so full that it has been necessary to hire temporary ones out of the docks. The export district is literally deserted.'

The connexion with the Continental System thus seems to be manifest; and to judge by all English sources, the difficulties connected with the disposal of colonial goods were at first even greater than in the case of exports of manufactures. During 1810, for instance, the trade statistics give practically unaltered figures for the exports of British goods, though, of course, it is possible that in the first half year there was a rise which made up for the decline in the second half year; on the other hand, they show a decline of 19¼ per cent. for foreign and colonial goods, and it was not until 1811 that the exports declined more or less parallel for both groups. From this one may safely conclude that the Trianon and Fontainebleau policy practically had the effect, at least for the moment, of making things more difficult by the stricter control than of making them easier by the fiscal customs and licensing system. As regards the effect of the different markets on the development, we may possibly make cautious use of the trade statistics, although their reliability is undoubtedly limited even with regard to the legitimate trade, and of course much more dubious with regard to the legitimate trade and of course much more dubious with regard to smuggling into the Continent. We are here concerned with 'real', that is to say, declared, values; but the decline is no less marked as regards the 'official' values, in which changes of price have been eliminated.53 (See opposite page.)

We note immediately the pronounced decline in 1811—for colonial goods partly even in 1810—for the northern part of the Continent, which, together with the almost complete disappearance of exports to the United States and the substantial diminution in the figures for South America explains the great decline in the totals. On the other hand, it is remarkable how little the Mediterranean trade was disturbed, which indicates the importance of the Balkan peninsula as a port of penetration for the new trade route through Vienna. The relatively strong rise for Portugal in 1811 indicates a transformation at this point, which was favoured by Wellington's military successes. This increase in the trade with Portugal, which is confirmed from other sources, constituted the first sign of the limitation of the crisis in the sphere of foreign trade as early as the spring and early summer of 1811.

It is also of interest to follow the development at closer range, so to speak, with regard to the most important domestic articles of export, namely, the products of the cotton industry. On this point only 'official' values are available:54

In full accordance with the preceding table we here find almost the same position in 1810 as in 1809 contrasting with a huge decline in 1811—quite independent of the change in prices, be it noted—a decline which for woven goods amounts to 35½ per cent., and for yarn to no less than 54 per cent.

Practically all pronouncements on the question of the causes of the crisis, especially in 1811, are also agreed in attributing it to the scarcity of sales and the closing of the continental ports. The main factors are very well summarized in a letter from Liverpool, dated November 22, 1810, reprinted by Tooke, from which we may quote the following paragraph:

The effect of all this was a fall in prices in England, especially for colonial goods; and this, in consideration of the high prices for the same goods on the Continent, served Napoleon as a decisive proof of the success of his policy. Thus, for instance, the prices of coffee, according to Tooke's price statistics for four different points of time in each year, showed a downward tendency as early as July and November 1810, and fell with a crash in March 1811; e.g. the price of 'St. Domingo, for exportation' fell from 96-105s. per cwt. in January 1810 to 36-42s. per cwt. in March 1811;and for 'British Plantation, in bond, inferior' the fall was from 70-112s. to 25-52s. per cwt. in the same period. For sugar the decline was somewhat less pronounced, but the price had reached its lowest level somewhat earlier, namely, for most grades, as far back as November 1810. Thus for 'Havannah White, for exportation' there was a fall from 60-75s. per cwt. in July 1810 to 38-51s.in November; and for 'East India, Brown, in bond', from 50-60s.in April to 37-45s.in November. As regards cotton, of course, there were numerous quotations for the many different qualities, and the general effect is somewhat varied during 1810; but the spring of 1811 shows, almost without exception, figures that are about half of those that held good a year previously. Thus, 'West India, Surinam' fell from 22-27d. to 9-15d. per pound; South American (Pernambuco) from 25-27d. to 14-15d.;and the most important kind of all, North American cotton (intermediate quality, Bowed Georgia), fell, according to Daniels' Liverpool figures, from 21-22d. in January 1810 to 10½-12¼d. in June 1811; while Tooke's figures here reveal a still heavier fall—from 17-19d. in April 1810, to 7-9d. in April 1811, respectively. The same was the case with Spanish wool, which between the same two points of time sank from 13-14s. to 7-8s. per pound.

CHAPTER VI.

SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE SYSTEM

NAPOLEON completely misinterpreted the significance of British difficulties; and how much the dislocation of British colonial trade was an effect of the general insecurity of the world, that is to say, not solely of Napoleon's measures, is shown by the fact that the French crisis, too, had its origin in huge speculations with regard to colonial goods.55 It is also doubtful to what extent Napoloen's torrent of words concerning the impending ruin of England fully convinced even himself. At any rate, a remarkable document dating from as far back as the beginning of 1812 shows how far he had come to doubt the expediency of maintaining the Continental System in its original form and purpose. The document referred to, which is printed from an official copy in the great edition of Napoleon I's correspondence which came out under Napoleon III, is there called Note sur le blocus continental. It was dictated in the Council of Merchants and Manufacturers on January 13, and, like many of Napoleon's other dictated utterances, it has the character of a kind of imperial monologue. In the case before us, however, it gives us the unusual impression of half-formed thoughts in the mind of a man who does not see his way clearly before him; and if it did not end in charging the home secretary to work out plans in accordance with the lines laid down, one might easily conceive the whole as a mere experiment in thought. The pre-history and consequences of the plan have never been examined, so far as I know, and consequently much of it is obscure; but, notwithstanding this fact, it is of uncommonly great interest as an indication of the general trend of Napoleon's thoughts.

In his introductory words Napoleon lays it down that there are two alternatives: 'either to remain where we are, or to march with great steps toward a different order of things'. As an illustration of the established order he makes a comparison between the prices of sugar in the different countries under his rule in relation to the customs rates, and on the basis of this comparison he concludes that the laws are enforced loyally in France, the Kingdom of Italy, and Naples, but less diligently in the states of the Confederation of the Rhine; after this a calculation is made of the requirements in those three countries, on the supposition that the consumption has been reduced to a third. So far as one can understand, it is on the basis of this that the second alternative is to be founded, namely, an altogether unimpeded granting of licences for the whole requirements of all transmarine goods, on payment of heavy duties, and also on condition of the export of French goods. The requirements of sugar imports, estimated at 450,000 quintaux, will thus bring into the coffers of the state no less than 70,000,000 francs; and this importation will be allowed against an export of money to the amount of 10,000,000 francs and of goods to the value of 30,000,000 francs. The same system is afterwards to be applied to coffee, hides, indigo, tea, raw cotton, and dyewoods. 'This will produce,' he says, 'a great activity in industry, encouragement for navigation, the navy and the brokerage business, a customs income of 200,000,000 francs a year, and a germ of prosperity and life in all our ports.'

So far there was nothing more than a consistent followingout of the established licensing system, even though the last expression cited hints how heavily the policy had fallen on French economic life. But the reasons alleged and the immediate execution show how far Napoleon had travelled from the original plan of the Continental System. It is true that he does not make the slightest admission of this. 'For France,' he says, 'the result will be a dream '—a dream which could not have been attained without the Continental System. 'His Majesty does not regard this as a change in the system, but as a consequence of it.' He maintains, in fact—in the most palpable conflict with his own decrees, though without the slightest sign of embarrassment—that he has never said that France should not receive sugar, coffee, and indigo, but alleges that he has been content with customs duties thereon. What he now pretends to have said is merely that the goods were not to be received except in exchange for French goods on French vessels and dependent upon the licences. Of all this, needless to say, the Berlin and Milan decrees gave not the slightest hint. 'Accordingly, it is the thus improved system that has achieved this result, which had not been counted upon for several years.'

However, the question arises how such a general granting of licences, with the object of bringing in money to the treasury and forcing up exports, would affect England, the crushing of whom, of course, was the primary object of the original policy. 'This will not benefit England with regard to industry, brokery, or freights;it will profit England solely as a sale for her [colonial] goods, and a part of those goods are really Dutch and French [as originating in their colonies]. Without doubt this is very advantageous for England, but it will cause an upheaval there; and is the profit less or greater for France?' 'That profit,' continues Napoleon, 'is for France like three to one, while the profit of the Treaty of Versailles (the Eden Treaty) was more like one to seven,' and therefore we have now to deal with 'a lasting system that may well be eternal'.

For the present, however, in the opinion of the Emperor, it is unnecessary to discuss whether the system can be introduced, for it should at all events be attempted; if it fails, the whole thing may well remain in the minutes of the Council. The execution is to take the form of a normalization of the licensing system, in that two kinds of licences are to be granted, the one unconditional for the import of foodstuffs, the other for the import of colonial goods on condition of the export of wine and brandy from Nantes and Bordeaux and of textiles from the north of France. For the non-French territories of Napoleon there are to be arranged fourteen'series' of importing places with corresponding export obligations, which will partly include the products of these countries themselves, but should take place through French licences. Of the duties, an amount between one-third and two-thirds shall fall to the princes concerned and the remainder shall fall to the French treasury, provided they follow the routes indicated. Danzig may possibly be allowed to export not only building timber but also corn to England, on condition of sending twice as much to France, and on payment of a special export duty, which should be considered in detail.56

We thus see on what courses Napoleon had now started out. We are here concerned with a balancing of the purely commercial advantages of France against those of Great Britain, that is to say, the points of view of the kind that are usually put forward, for instance, in negotiating a commercial treaty; and in full analogy with this, the system is thought of as a permanent measure, not as a war measure, designed to destroy England. The concession, deliberately shoved aside by Napoleon and treated by him as a trifle in form, that the new order of things would be advantageous for England in respect of the trade in colonial goods, stands in the strongest possible contrast to the proud announcement of 180757 that England sees her vessels laden with superfluous wealth, wandering around the seas and seeking in vain a port to open and receive them. Now Napoleon himself considers opening all his ports for the purpose, if only he can get these vessels to take French goods in exchange. This means that the principle of the Continental System has been abandoned. To use an expression of Professor Hjärne, in his book Revolutionen och Napoleon, in connexion with other sides of the policy of the empire, one may call this the 'self-destruction of the system'.

During the period of barely four months that remained before Napoleon's departure for the Russian campaign we find no traces in his correspondence of any formal measures on the lines of the January memorandum. Even his superhuman powers were more and more completely absorbed by his military preparations; and in the sphere of economics the threatening shortage of corn formed a peril which occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of all plans with more remote objects in view. From what is so far known, therefore, it does not appear that the new order of things was ever formally accepted, even though the actual policy, so far as one can judge, came nearer and nearer thereto. Besides, already during 1812 the economic situation slowly improved in Great Britain, especially after the South American trade had got into a healthy state as early as February, although, it is true, there were still disturbances in the textile districts. The Continental System was deprived of a main pillar quite early in 1812 (March) through the fact that Davout, whom Sorel calls the 'archi-douanier' of the empire, left for the front, which meant the removal of the inflexible determination to prevent smuggling into the country via the North Sea coast. After the retreat from Moscow and the advance of the Russian troops along the Baltic coast in the beginning of 1813, it became manifestly impossible to maintain the barrier. Thus the prefect of the Weser department reports that 'smuggling was raising its head all along the line'; the warehouses were filled with contraband, and smuggling vessels went openly across the seas to the enemy. Rist gives a vigorous description of the rising against the French customs officials in Hamburg at the close of February 1813, when a whole army of trouserless smugglers hurled their hereditary enemies into the dried-up canals and good-humouredly stormed their premises. 'Thus,' he goes on, 'there disappeared within a few hours all those barriers, those dens of imperial avarice, and the forbidden goods streamed unimpeded along the forbidden ways.' In the same way smuggling broke out openly in Switzerland, after having been kept down as much as possible during the preceding period.

This, however, did not mean that Napoleon had abandoned the Continental System. In Hamburg Davout resumed his power and exacted a frightful vengeance; and as late as May and June 1813, the Emperor caused quantities of colonial goods to be confiscated in the Grand Duchy of Berg, Hamburg, &c., even such as had paid the proper dues or had been sold by the French customs officials, and had them conveyed to the usual places for the collection of such goods. On the other hand, this does not settle the question whether, and to what extent, the object pursued was the great aim of the Continental System, or whether Napoleon, after the retreat from Moscow, still believed in the possibility of success in his struggle against the economic fabric of England. At times this last was undoubtedly the case, as is stated by so credible an observer as Mollien, who lays particular stress on the hopes of an impending ruin for the credit of England with which the unfavourable rates of exchange inspired the Emperor at that time. Still, this question must be separated from that of gaining the end in view through the particular means called the Continental System; and on this subject, which concerns us here, it must be said that fiscal considerations had now become so pressing that it was necessary to brush aside the idea of carrying out the war against the trade of Great Britain. Napoleon's utterances at this period become more and more frankly mercenary; and we may regard as the epitaph of the system a new memorandum by the Emperor immediately after his return from Moscow (December 22, 1812), a significant counterpart to the long memorandum of January in the same year that we have summarized at length above. In that document the Emperor charges his minister of finance to inform the ministry of commerce that he needs 150,000,000 francs in ordinary and extraordinary customs revenues during 1813, giving the following reasons:

This necessity to live, that is to say, fiscalism, in combination with the hopelessness of a consistent application of the self-blockade, was what had led to the self-destruction of the Continental System; and we have good reasons to doubt the possibility of its continuance in spirit and in truth, even if the Russian campaign and the wars of liberation had not intervened. As it is, the gigantic experiment had been followed to such a point that the end seemed to be in sight, though it was not obtained. It is therefore inevitable that opinions as to its feasibility must remain divided. Nevertheless, a good deal more light falls on this question if one investigates the effects of the Continental System on the economic life of the different countries. This is to be the subject and the object of part IV.

[1.][1] Quotations from two letters addressed to his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, on Jan. 23, 1807, and to the Emperor Alexander of Russia on Oct. 23, 1810. Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, nos. 11,682 and 17,071. In consonance with this the representative of Napoleon in Switzerland, Rouyer, declared in 1810 that the Swiss commercial houses were generally only 'commanditaires et expéditionnaires' of the English. Letter reproduced in de Cérenville, Le système continental, &c., p. 337. See also Schmidt, Le Grand-duché de Berg, p. 374, note 2.

[2.][2] König, Die Sächsische Baumwollenindustrie, &c., pp. 204 et seq., 215-6.

[3.][3] J. G. Rist, Lebenserinnerungen (Poel ed., Gotha, 1880), vol. II, pp. 29-30; Mollien, Mémoires, &c., vol. II, p. 462. Cf. Louis Bonaparte to his brother Jerome, Oct. 15, 1808, in Duboscq, Louis Bonaparte en Hollande, d'après ses lettres (Paris, 1911), no. 185.

[4.][4] Mollien, op. cit., vol. II, p. 461; König, op. cit., pp. 180-1; Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, &c., vol. II, p. 305; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, pp. 287, 351, 384; Tarle, Deutsch-französische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, loc. cit., pp. 679-80, 718.

[5.][5] Von Rosen to von Engeström, Aug. 7, 1811, in Ahnfelt, Ur Svenska hofvets och aristokratiens lif (Stockholm, 1882), vol. V, p. 259; Peez and Dehn, Englands Vorherrschaft. Aus der Zeit der Kontinentalsperre (Leipzig, 1912), p. 258.

[6.][6] Correspondance, nos. 11,355; 11,356; 11,363; 11,378; 11,383; Proclamation of Dec. 2, 1806, printed in König, op. cit., Anlage 2.

[7.][7] For this and what follows concerning the Hanse Towns, cf. Wohlwill, Neuere Geschichte, &c., pp. 339 et seq.; Servières, L'Allemagne francaise, &c., pp. 98 et seq.; Vogel, Die Hansestädte, &c., loc. cit., pp. 18 et seq.; Schäfer, Bremen und die Kontinentalsperre, loc. cit., pp. 416 et seq. Also König, op. cit., pp. 179 et seq., 355 et seq.; Stephen in the House of Commons, Mar. 6, 1809 (Hansard, vol. XIII, app. pp. xxxiii et seq.); Order in Council of Feb. 18, 1807 (Hansard, vol. x, pp. 129 et seq.).

[8.][8] Bourrienne, Mémoires sur Napoléon, &c. (Paris, 1829), vol. VII, pp. 291 et seq.

[9.][9] Lettres inédites de Napoléon Ier (Lecestre ed.), nos. 523 (Sept. 12, 1809), 823 (June 13, 1811), 826 (June 22, 1811); Servières, op. cit., p. 124; Wohlwill, Neuere Geschichte, &c., p. 300.

[10.][10] See ante, p. 123.

[11.][11] For the decrees of Aug. 6 and Nov. 13, 1807, cf. König, op. cit., Anlage 2. For the first Milan decree, cf. Bulletin des lois, &c., 4th ser., bull. 172, no. 2 912. For the Tuileries decree, cf. Martens, Nouveau recueil, &c., vol. I, p. 457; Duboscq, op. cit., no. 95 and p. 14; Holm, Danmark-Norges Historie, &c., vol. VII, pt. I, pp. 123-4, 180, 197; Linvald, Bidrag til Oplysning, &c., vol. VI, pp. 448 et seq. The following may also be consulted: France: Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières, &c., de 1789 à 1870, vol. I, pp. 409-10, 422 note 4; Ballot, Les prêts, &c., vol. II, pp. 48-9, 54-5; Mollien, op. cit., vol. II, p. 120. Central Europe: König, op. cit., sec. III; Hasse, Geschichte der Leipziger Messen (Leipzig, 1885), pp. 409 et seq.; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, p. 397; Schäfer, op. cit., pp. 434 et seq., tables I-III. Great Britain: Hansard, vol. XIII, app., pp. xxxvii et seq., xliii et seq. (House of Commons, Mar. 6, 1809); trade statistics in Hansard, vols. XIV, XX, XXII, app.; Tooke, A History of Prices, &c., vol. II (tables of imports and prices), vol. I, pp. 273 et seq.; Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (1835), p. 350 (table); Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, &c., vol. II, pp. 304 et seq.

[12.][12] See ante, p. 164.

[13.][13] It should be remarked once for all that the British commercial statistics are not only highly uncertain in themselves, but also show inexplicable variations in different sources. But the relative changes, as a rule, exhibit a considerably better agreement than the absolute numbers, and may therefore be assumed to deserve greater confidence than the latter. For the absolute figures, see post, p. 245.

[14.][14] See ante, p. 57.

[15.][15] Petitions and speeches in the House of Commons, Feb. 22 and 23, Mar. 10 and 18, 1808 (Hansard, vol. X, pp. 692-3, 708-9, 1056 et seq., 1182-83); Speeches of Whitbread and Alexander Baring in the House of Commons, Mar. 6, 1809 (Hansard, vol. XII, pp. 1169, 1194); Worm-Müller, Norge gjennem nødsaarene 1807-1810 (Christiania, 1917-18), p. 123.

[16.][16] Note pour le ministre des relations extérieures, Oct. 7, 1810 (Correspondance, no. 17,014).

[17.][17] Darmstädter, Studien zur napoleonischen Wirtschaftspolitik, loc. cit. (1904), vol. II, pp. 596-7. The decline in the exports of France to Spain in 1808, which is there given as amounting to 32,400,000 francs (£1,300,000), cannot possibly have been compensated by British exports, if the table given above is reliable. Probably it largely corresponds to the imports of grain from the United States.

[18.][18] McCulloch, Principles of Political Economy (London, 1830), 2d. ed. p. 330; Smart, Economic Annals, &c., vol. I, pp. 122-3, 184. Cf. speech in the House of Commons, June 16, 1812 (Hansard, vol. XXIII, p. 503); Louis Simond, Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 1811, by a French Traveller (New York, 1815), vol. I, p. 242 (under date of Aug. 1, 1810).

[19.][19] See post, p. 179.

[20.][20] De Cérenville, op. cit., p. 309; Duboscq, op. cit., nos. 117, 118, 126, 146, 158, 159, 160, 167, 178, 189, 190; and pp. 47 et seq.;Correspondance, no. 13, 781. Dutch Ordinances: Martens, Nouveau recueil, &c., vol. I, pp. 458-9, 474-5.

[21.][21] Fisher, Studies in Napoleonic Statesmanship: Germany (Oxford, 1903), pp. 338 et seq.; Rubin, 1807—1814, &c., pp. 383-4; Clason, Sveriges Historia intill tjugonde seklet (Stockholm, 1910), vol. IX: A, pp. 26-7; Bergwall, Historisk underrättelse, &c., p. 48 (table); Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez (Ross ed., London, 1838), vol. II, p. 105; Ahnfelt, op. cit., vol. v, p. 225; Ramm, När Göteborg var frihamn (Gothenburg, 1900), p. 3.

[22.][22] Duboscq, op. cit., no. 182.

[23.][23] See ante, p. 174.

[24.][24] Lettres inédites, nos. 476, 477, 527, 555; Duboscq, op. cit., nos. 209, 220, 277; Schmidt, Le Grand-duché de Berg, pp. 348 et seq.; Wellesley, Memoirs and Correspondence, vol. III, p. 196; Prytz, Kronologiska anteckningar rörande Göteborg (Gothenburg, 1898), p. 95; Bergwall, op. cit., table 3; Channing, op. cit., vol. XII, p. 253; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, p. 486.

[25.][25] See ante, p. 181.

[26.][26] Correspondance, nos. 16,476, 16,713; Duboscq, op. cit., no. 290; Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 350-3; König, op. cit., pp. 225 et seq., 230-1, 238 et seq., 241-2; Darmstädter, Das Grossherzogtum Frankfurt (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1901), pp. 311-12.

[27.][27] Hansard, vol. XII, pp. 801; vol. XVI, p. 1043 et seq; d'Ivernois, Effets du blocus continental sur le commerce, les finances et la prospérité des Isles Britanniques (London, 1809: dated July 24); Servières, op. cit., p. 131 note.

[28.][28] For the smuggling and corruption there are almost unlimited materials in the extensive literature bearing upon this subject, particularly in the works of König, Schmidt, Servières, Fisher, de Cérenville, Rambaud, Rubin, Peez and Dehn, and also in the treatises of Tarle and Schäfer. To these, moreover, should be added the work of Chapuisat, Le commerce et l'industrie à Genève, &c., pp. 29 et seq., 44. The quotation from Bourrienne refers to his Mémoires, vol. VIII, ch. XI, pp. 195-6. The quotation from Rist refers to his Lebenserinnerungen, vol. II, pp. 106 et seq. The reference to Simond's Journal will be found in vol. I, p. 242; vol. II, p. 77. As to the trustworthiness of Bourrienne and Rist, cf. Wohlwill, Neuere Geschichte, &c., especially pp. 295 note, 397 note; also his review of Servières, in Hansische Geschichtsblätter for 1906.

[29.][29] We know from a letter of Bourrienne to Napoleon in October 1809 that the same situation existed at that time. Lingelbach, Historical Investigation and the Commercial History of the Napoleonic Era, in the American Historical Review (vol. XIX (1913-14), p. 276.

[30.][30] See ante, p. 71.

[31.][31] De Watteville, Souvenirs d'un douanier, &c., loc. cit., vol. II (1908), p. 113 note 2; vol. III (1909), pp. 78, 82-3. Although the anecdote about Josephine's British goods does not appear in the contemporary letters, but in the much later memoirs, it gains credibility from the assertion of Boucher de Perthes that the ex-Empress often reminded him of the incident during her last years. For the smuggling from Cowes, cf. Kiesselbach, Die Continentalsperre, &c., p. 122. For the rest of the text, cf. Correspondance, nos. 13,718, 16,508; Lettres inédites, nos. 874, 877; Chaptal, Souvenirs, &c., pp. 274-8; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, pp. 306-7, 615-6. The authenticity of the letter of 1808 is not altogether above suspicion, but it is in complete consonance with Napoleon's correspondence as a whole.

[32.][32] Mollien, Mémoires, &c., vol. III, p. 10.

[33.][33] Besides the above-cited passages, cf. especially Napoleon's letters of Sept. 2, 11, and Dec. 18, 1810, and of Jan. 1 and Sept. 3, 1811. Correspondance, nos. 16,859, 16,891, 17,225, 17,257, 18,111.

[34.][34] Darmstädter, Das Grossherzogtum Frankfurt, p. 308 note 3. Cf. Perceval in the House of Commons in the Debate on the Budget, 1810. Hansard, vol. XVI, p. 1056. See also Schmidt, Le Grand-duché de Berg, pp. 358-9.

[35.][35] Correspondance, no. 16,983; de Cérenville, op. cit., pp. 331-2.

[36.][36] Law of Jan. 12, 1912 (Bulletin des lois, &c., 4th ser., bull. 260, no. 5,122); Letters to Eugene of Aug. 6 and Sept. 19, 1810 (Correspondance, nos. 16,767, 16,930); Thiers, Histoire du consulat, &c., bk. XXXVIII, vol. XII, p. 186 note.

[37.][37] 3 Geo. III, c. 21. It may be questioned, however, whether the truculence of this statute was seriously meant. The later British measures were, however, made the subject of a very effective article in Le Moniteur of Dec. 9, 1810.

[38.][38] Decree of July 9 regarding the incorporation of Holland, sec. 10; decree of Aug. 5 (Trianon tariff); decree of Sept. 27; decree of Oct. 18—aceording to the archives, Oct. 19—(Fontainebleau decree); decree of Nov. 1 (Bulletin des lois, &c., 4th ser., bull. 299, no. 5,724; bull. 304, no. 5,778; bull. 315, no. 5,958; bull. 321, no. 6,040; bull. 324, no. 6,067); Kiesselbach (op. cit., pp. 133-4) gives a translation of the enlarged Trianon tariff of Sept. 27 which is not in the Bulletin des lois. See also Thiers, op. cit.; Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières, &c., de 1789 à 1870, vol. I, pp. 481 et seq.; Zeyss, Die Entstehung der Handelskammern, &c., pp. 140 note, 149 et seq.; Schäfer, op. cit., p. 444; Bourrienne, op. cit., vol. VII, p. 233.

[39.][39] Letters to Champagny (Jan. 1) and Savary, minister of police (Jan. 7). Lettres inédites, nos. 733, 748. Cf. letter to Davout (Jan. 1). Correspondance, no. 17,257. See also König, op. cit., p. 237.

[40.][40] Brougham's speech will be found in Hansard, vol. XXI, pp. 1110 et seq. Other parliamentary matter, including petitions bearing upon the British licence system, will be found under the following dates: Jan. 29, Mar. 7, 1808; Feb. 17, 1809; May 23, 1810; Feb. 18, 27, 28, Mar. 3, Apr. 16, 17, 27, 29, May 4, 20, June 16, 1812. Hansard, vol. X, pp. 185 et seq., 923 et seq.; vol. XII, pp. 791-2; vol. XVII, pp. 168-9; vol. XXI, pp. 842 et seq., 979 et seq., 1041 et seq., 1092 et seq.; vol. XXII, pp. 411 et seq., 424 et seq., 1057-8, 1118-9, 1152 et seq.; vol. XXIII, pp. 237, 540. Miss Cunningham, British Credit, &c., pp. 62-3; Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, &c., vol. II, pp. 228 et seq., 308; also, Sea Power in its Relations, &c., vol. I, p. 246; Wellesley, Memoirs, &c., vol. III, pp. 195-6; Quarterly Review (May, 1811), vol. V, pp. 457 et seq.; Grade, Sverige och Tilsit-Alliansen, 1807-1810 (Lund, 1913), pp. 424, 428-9, 431; Worm-Müller, op. cit., passim; Jacob Aall, Erindringer som Bidrag til Norges Historie fra 1800-1815 (Christiania, 1844), vol. II, p. 197; Holm, Danmark-Norges Historie, &c., vol. VII: 2, pp. 351-2, 385-6; Servières, op. cit., p. 286. Some very drastic Norwegian instructions to ships' masters may be found in Worm-Müller, op. cit., pp. 501 et seq.

[41.][41] See ante, p. 84.

[42.][42] See ante, p. 215.

[43.][43] Licensing decree of July 25, 1810, printed in Martens, Nouveau recueil, &c., vol. I, p. 512; Correspondance, nos. 16,224, 16,767, 16,810, 16,930; Lettres inédites, loc. cit., nos. 652, 874, 927, 928, 929, 972, 1082; Servières, op. cit., pp. 134-9, 265 et seq.; Schäfer, op. cit., pp. 436-7; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, pp. 310-11, 560; Holm, Danmark-Norges Historie, vol. VII: 2, pp. 54-5, 188-9, 267-8, 271-2. The work of Melvin, Napoleon's Navigation System (New York, 1919), has reached me too late to be taken into account.

[44.][44] See ante, p. 120.

[45.][45] See ante, p. 185.

[46.][46] Lettres inédites, nos. 803, 830, 837, 845, &c. Prussian ordinances in Martens, Nouveau recueil, &c., vol. I, pp. 514 et seq.: Rist, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 78, 87, 105-6; Bourrienne, op. cit., vol. VII, p. 233; vol. IX, pp. 50-1; Rubin, op. cit., pp. 393 et seq.; Darmstädter, Das Grossherzogtum Frankfurt, pp. 312 et seq. The decree for Frankfurt in Le Moniteur, Nov. 11, 1811; Kiesselbach, op. cit., pp. 135 et seq.; Schmidt, Le Grand-duché de Berg, pp. 375 et seq., 380, 386; Servières, op. cit., pp. 148-9, 273 et seq.; Schäfer, op. cit., pp. 429-30; König, op. cit., pp. 195, 231-2, &c.; Thiers, op. cit., vol. XII, pp. 28 et seq., 191-2; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, p. 294; de Cérenville, op. cit., pp. 57 et seq.; Zeyss, op. cit., pp. 140 et seq., Anhang IX; Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières, &c., de 1789 à 1870, vol. I, pp. 485 et seq.

[47.][47] Darmstädter, Die Verwaltung des Unter-Elsass (Bas-Rhin) unter Napoleon I, in Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins (N. F., XIX, 1904), pp. 662 et seq.; Tarle, Kontinental'naja blokada, vol. I, pp. 274-5, 280.

[48.][48] Tooke, History of Prices, &c., vol. I, pp. 309-10 note.

[49.][49] See ante, p. 152.

[50.][50] Correspondance, nos. 16,476; 16,713; 17,040; 17,041; 17,062; 17,071; 17,098; 17,099; 17,179; 17,395; 17,517; 18,082; Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre Ier (Paris, 1893), vol. II, pp. 487 et seq., 508 et seq., 557; vol. III (1896), pp. 208-9, 215-6. The Memorial of 1816 printed in the English Historical Review (1903), vol. XVIII, pp. 122 et seq.; Hansard, vol. XXI, p. 1056; Schinkel-Bergman, Minnen ur Sveriges nyare historia (Stockholm, 1855), vol. VI, pp. 69-70, and app. 10 (letters from Governor Rosen to Bernadotte, the Crown Prince, Karl Johan); Lars von Engeström, Minnen och Anteckningar, vol. II, pp. 182-3, and app. 5 c (letters from von Rosen to von Engeström); Memoirs, &c., of Lord de Saumarez, vol. II, pp. 229 et seq.; Clason, op. cit., vol. IX: A, pp. 26-7, 149-50, 156 et seq., 213. Governor von Rosen's letter of Sept. 8, 1810, is printed in Ahnfelt, op. cit., vol. V, p. 239. See also Bergwall, Historisk underrättelse, &c., table 5; Fröding, Det forna Göteborg (Stockholm, 1903), pp. 115 et seq.; also, Göteborgs Köp- och Handels-gille...1661-1911 (Gothenburg, 1911), pp. 124 et seq.; Ramm, op. cit., pp. 3, 8-9; Grade, op. cit., p. 429.

[51.][51] For the United Kingdom (and in part other countries): Report of the Select Committee on the State of Commercial Credit, Mar. 7, 1811 (Hansard, vol. XIX, pp. 249 et seq.); also the debates and petitions on the subject (Hansard, vol. XIX, pp. 123, 327, 416, 493, 529, 613, 662; vol. XX, pp. 339, 431, 608, 744); Simond, Journal of a Tour, &c., vol. II, pp. 48-9, 265; Tooke, op. cit. (extracts from the Monthly Magazine), vol. I, pp. 300 et seq.; vol. II, pp. 391, 393 et seq. (tables); Smart, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 203-4, 226-7, 263 et seq.

[52.][52] See ante, p. 176.

[53.][53] Hansard, vol. XXII, app. 1, cols. 1xi-1xii (the total figure for 1806 being corrected). As usual, the figures are for Great Britain only, not for Ireland.

[54.][54] After a table in Baines, op. cit., p. 350. To avoid mistakes, it might be well to utter a warning against the natural conclusion that it is possible to read from the figures the relation between manufactures and yarn in the exports; to judge by the years when there are 'real values' available, a doubling of the figures for yearn would give an approximately correct notion of this.

[55.][55] Darmstädter, Studien zur napoleonischen Wirtschaftspolitik, loc. cit., vol. II, pp. 579-80.

[56.][56] Correspondance, no. 18,431. There is a kind of germ of all this in the Memorandum of July 25, 1810, which forms the basis of the licence and Trianon decrees, extracts from which are given in Schmidt, op. cit., p. 358.

[57.][57] See ante, p. 74.

[58.][58] Correspondance, no. 19,391; Lettres inédites, nos. 1,002, 1,013, 1,018, 1,082; Mollien, op. cit., vol. III, p. 237; Rist, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 142-3, 159-60; Smart, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 335 et seq.; de Cérenville, op. cit., pp. 113, 310; Tarle, Deutsch-französische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, pp. 686-7; Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 408 et seq.